


Wandering Paw Prints through the Mulberry Bush

by orphan_account



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Detective Noir, Gen, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 02:19:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7666555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow a detective who's seen everything, done it all and remembers too much. Walk along side him through the gritty streets of Zootopia's underbelly; from the pitch black alleyways of the Nocturnal District to the icy roads of Tundra Town. You can't outrun from your past; and he knows, he's been doing it for most of his life, but his time in Maw City has left its mark, and is coming to claim its prey. You know what they say about Maw; it swallows good mammals whole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Broken Mammal from a Broken Home

A pacifist’s storm had taken hold of the wheat fields yesterday. The sky was absent of any colour. It had no blues swirling amongst the clouds to form a chunky soup; the sun couldn’t cut through its grey blanket. A light breeze rolled over the wheat, gently swaying it too and fro. 

The vast sea is interrupted only by a lonely dirt road, flanked by thick undergrowth of weeds and native bush. The road had seen very little traffic, if any, in its lifetime. Very few mammals would venture out that far from the city, and even fewer would travel along the road down to a single oak tree that erupted amidst the golden sea. The undisturbed silence of the wheat fields is what gave it its feeling of serenity. 

Yesterday the silence was disturbed, if only momentarily, before returning to the subduing calm. The breeze continued swirling the wheat with its soft touch, but this time it carried the smell of rust. 

If you were to ask any of the 27 million mammals living within Zootopia’s city limits where the oak tree lay, or how to get onto the isolated dirt road exactly 212 miles away, or 341 kilometres for the rest of the world, they would be unable to help you. They would surely sputter, and their small little minds, being unable to find an adequate answer, would come to question your sanity, and why a mammal would ever ask such an oddly specific question. ‘Is he insane?’ some would say, ‘Is this part of an experiment’ some with more coherent minds would ponder, and those who do not have the time of day to answer such insignificant questions would simply think, ‘Fuck off’, masking their thoughts behind politeness. The latter I hold no aggression to I assure you, one cannot hesitate in such a bustling city. 

Yes, when 27 million mammals are unable to answer a question, it is unlikely that any of the thirty-one riding on this subway car with me would be able to as well. As I look around as the train speeds along the subway, I notice that the variety of mammals sitting around me is a near-perfect sample of Zootopia’s population. About thirty of the mammals are prey, from sheep to a single elephant, and only two of them are predators. I am one of them, the other being a puma holding onto a rail by one of its looped grips with one paw and reading a folded newspaper with the other. 

His fur was dull and greyed, especially around his mussel, although it looked so not from age, but from the strain of a hard life. He was wearing a plaid green suit with brown pants, a white coffee-stained shirt and a red tie. On his right hip shining brightly in the sun was his badge, and I presumed on his left was his holstered gun. While his eyes were down on the paper, an early morning edition by the look of it, his ears constantly swivelled on his head, pointing to every mammal within their arc; sometimes he would look up from the paper and around him, checking his surroundings. Looking at every mammal on the train except me. 

I pondered what could have brought us together. Fate? I wonder if our paths will intertwine once more or part like the apple from its tree. The train emerged from the subway and entered an above ground station. As the train begun screeching to a halt, the detective folded his paper under his arm and turned to the door. As soon as they slid open he was out; a passenger waiting for the train would have mistaken him for a cheetah. As my vision started becoming blocked by the swarm of mammals flooding into the train, I saw him signal a taxi and with the closing of the doors, he was gone.

As the train begun to pick up speed, I twiddled my thumbs thinking over what I needed to do. I tell you, my mind could have burst with all the things I needed to prepare, the mammals I needed to meet, and the questions I needed to ask. I let out a deep sigh, resting the back of my head against the glass, the vibrating of the train as it sped over the tracks massaging my stressed brain as it started detailing my convoluted to-do list. 

My attention was suddenly snatched when my nose and body reacted to new senses. I took in a deep sniff, deep enough to identify this delicious new smell but not quite enough to draw unwanted attention. The smell came from a young impala that had just stepped onto the train, her perfume intoxicating, her shirt and low jeans outlining an immaculate figure. ‘What a ravishing doe’ I thought to myself as I allowed my mind to devilishly wander. Perhaps my work can wait, just for a bit of fun. 

 

\----------

 

As I slump down in the back of the taxi I kicked myself for being so late. I’d slept in this morning thanks to an uncompromising pack of Timber Wolves, who decided to have a good old fashion howl off last night. My experience with Timber Wolves is that they like to live in packs, which are friends with other packs; piss off one and you start a domino affect. I’d much rather leave it to good old Chloral to send me to sleep rather than piss them off. Unfortunately you just don’t wake up to your alarm after having Chloral the night before. 

I’d finally awoken from my self-induced coma with thumping temples and bed sheets soaking in sweat. ‘Will send you off on a Peaceful night sleep’ my ass; those dreams I had last night were the worst I’d had in months. Of course it might not be the Chloral; I get a shitty night’s sleep no matter what I’ve had. I rise from the pillow and sit on the side of the bed, the after affects of the Chloral setting in, my temples thumping like the blaring drum of a rock band, my skull feeling like it was going to crack and let loose all of the demons swimming within the soup of my subconscious. 

Soon the headaches ended and I’m released of my paralysis. I opened my blinds and let the morning light penetrate my bedroom, the chaotic disorganisation of the strewn clothes made the floor look like a battlefield scarred by artillery and the smell of cheap beer and cheaper cigarettes hung in the air. I opened my window ajar so the air wouldn’t linger in the apartment and become stale and I made my way to the shower 

I can confidently say that the best part of my day for the past twenty years is the shower. Letting the water just relax and unwind your muscles is blissful. And the feeling of the water running down your fur like a waterfall, letting the vortex send me into a trance is the closest I’ve ever come to calmness. But then the demons of my mind soon notice the dormant thoughts, and they bring them to the surface. They reopen old wounds and reveal scars that will not go away. When this happens I realise that it’s time for me to get out, and I let my thoughts be sucked in by the drain. 

After putting the kettle onto boil I prepared coffee in a mug while it bubbled, shook and erupted steam into the air and caused the shitty ceiling paint to crack further. I went back into my room and gathered my things, my suit; shirt tie: phone and gun. While all my other items were in their places, or as close to as a drunk me could get them, my badge was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t in my dresser, bedside table or my cabinet. Thinking back hard, I retraced my steps as my headache attempted to resurface and I realised where I had put my badge; the same place it was almost every night. I walked back into the kitchen, grabbed the bin from under the sink and sifted around a bit; sure enough there shone the golden symbol of justice, or what passed for it in this city. 

The damn thing always found itself there, whether I’d been drinking that night or not. While memory doesn’t serve me well and it certainly didn’t change at all this morning, I could have sworn I put it on the counter by the door. Right before I stumbled through the apartment, swore incoherently at my howling neighbours and then popped a Chloral and called it a night. ‘Maybe drunk me was trying to tell me something’ I thought to myself as I attached the badge and gun to my belt, putting my coat over it. As I made my coffee I quickly reasoned that there was no point in listening to a drunk me because he’s both drunk and me, two combinations one should never mix. I checked the time on my watch. “Fuck!” I yelled out, simultaneously spilling a bit of coffee on my clean-ironed shirt. The Chloral had really done its job at putting me in a coma, because I had overslept, and was running later than a muddled up sloth. I threw my cup back and finished the rest of my coffee, put it on the counter and ran out the door. 

I followed my usual steps in locking the door. Put the key in, three turns to the right than five to the left then turn the knob twice any way and take out the key. ‘I need to head down to that door place off Antler Avenue’ I thought to myself as I left my apartment. I made my way down to the dimly lit garage underneath my apartment block and to my car; an old Cowdi that’s seen more bad days than me. I was just about to get in when I realised that, with morning traffic in full swing, it would take too long to get to the station; I was forced to take the subway. Turning back around I went back up the stairwell and out the front of the apartment and, as I had guessed, it was busy. The road was swarming with hundreds of cars and the sidewalks were choked with hundreds of hoofs. The city of Zootopia had finally woken up. 

The quickest way to get to the subway station was to cross the road and cut across Bridge Park. I looked at the traffic light to my right; they were a solid green and every second of waiting felt like an hour. But then the light switched to yellow. 

The stream of traffic in front of me slowly came to a stop as the lights turned red. I began to make my way through the cars, earning more than one stare from impatient drivers. I looked back at the traffic lights overhead; still red, but I could see that the traffic in the other lane was beginning to halt; their lights were turning red. With a sense of urgency, as you would have when your three quarters of the way across a busy road, I increased my pace. I bumped into a few cars, earning yells and hand gestures from motorists. I just made it across when the light turned green, but my tail was still on the road, and a mouse’s sports car ran over it, gaining a few seconds of air. Swerving a bit when it crashed back onto the tarmac, the mouse didn’t even look back, simply held up his finger and screamed “Watch where you’re going pred!” 

Fine by me, it would be less paperwork I’d have to deal with today. 

I ran up the grassy knoll to the park, sprinting through a maze of trees and mammals enjoying the summer sun. I soon made it to the other side, and walked up the stairs to the train station above, the train line running along a bridge through the residential area before diving into the underground subway levels. I went to the counter and bought a ticket and an early morning edition of the Times, and waited on the platform. As I waited for the train I noticed how devoid of life the station was, despite the bustling traffic below the only passenger there was I. 

There was also staleness in the air that put the fur on the back of my neck on edge; it felt like the earth had stopped moving and as I breathed in, the taste of rust rolled on my tongue, stinging it. I swallowed, my mouth becoming dry and I coughed a few times. I folded over the newspaper, nothing of particular interest stuck me; a fluff-piece editorial about the progress of the election campaign struck the front page disguised as news, a small column about a few missing mammal reports was condensed to a sliver of the side of the page and there was yet another article about the possibility of the Carrot Market crashing once again this year. With their main source of income so unstable, I was surprised that Bunnyburrow wasn’t some desolate wasteland like Furnobyl. 

I kept reading the paper, an article about Tundratown crime rates sparking my interest. The ambient sounds of the city below filled my ears and danced around my aching temples like music as I red. The sound of a blaring train horn in the distance caught my attention, my ears turning to my right. I looked up from the paper, and sure enough there was the train rounding the corner and entering the station. As the train pulled up I noticed about twelve mammals emerge from seemingly out of nowhere, some from the stairwell leading to the street below and some from inside the station. As the train came to a rest the door slid open with a synthetic voice announcing, “Please step back, the doors are now Opening”. A swarm of mammals quickly emptied out, I counted about fifty rodents coming out of the tiny door on the far right, a lemming train streaming out about twenty within a few seconds. As I entered and swiped my ticket, I wondered how it would be to be so small and live in such a large world. 

Although I was within the train no later than three seconds, all seats my size had been taken. So it was either be sandwiched between an elephant and a bull or hang onto one of the rails. I decided that standing was preferable to being made into a PLT so I grabbed onto one of the grips, swaying off balance as the train jeered to a start. 

My body swaying like a palm tree in a storm as the train moved along the winding bridge, I couldn’t help but notice that I collected a few stares from the passengers around me. I guess seeing a pred with a gun can be a bit alarming, even when he’s wearing a god damn badge. I decided to escape their stares by getting my paper out from under my arm and continuing to read. While I tried to avoid it, my ears began to wander around the train, going from mammal to mammal. Nothing more than the usual gossip filled my ears; there were mammals discussing the weather, politics and whose been sleeping with whom. 

As I continued reading the paper, the feeling of foreboding I felt at the station washed over me once again. The conflicting scents in the air, mixing together to form an invisible broth, were subdued by the overbearing smell of rust. I looked around, to see if anyone else showed discomfort at the smell but when no one seemed to notice it or care, I questioned if this rusty smell was all in my mind. Yet the taste was so vivid on my tongue, so real, I could have been licking a piece of shrapnel there and then, that it seemed like it couldn’t be. 

I looked around. The stares were gone, at least those that I could notice. 

The train spent the next fifteen minutes by my watch, only twelve according to the schedule, underground in the subway; the lights going past in neon blurs like we were on a space ship making the jump to hyper space. I continued reading the paper, moving from the editorials, to sports, to international news back to the editorials. At the end of the twelve-minute estimated fifteen-minute ride the train shot up above aground, like a dolphin surging up from the depths of the sea to grasp the feeling of fresh air and the boiling sun. 

I let out a yawn as the sun warmed my body and put the paper underneath my arm as a voice announced we were pulling into the station. The train came to a halt, the wheels screeching like banshees and causing some mammals on the train with more sensitive ears to grimace. I checked my watch, I was still late, but the train had certainly made up for lost time. As soon as the doors opened I shot out like I had gone mad, hailing a passing taxi and getting in, slumping into the cushiony embrace of the back seats. The smell and taste of rust had left me. 

The driver, an anteater, looked at me, then my gun, then quickly shot his eyes back to me again, tense, before he noticed my badge, the tension seeming to evaporate from his body at once. “Where to, officer?”

“Central District, ZPD station”

“The one on Lionheart Boulevard?” He said as he looked over his right shoulder at oncoming traffic, waiting for an opening. 

“That’s the one. Also, can we make it snappy? I’m in a bit of a hurry. ” He gave me a nod and sped into the right lane. Overtaking several cars in the left, he quickly changed lanes and sped past a truck, not even looking in his rear vision mirrors or blind spots. 

“Hey officer, mind if I make idle talk? Figured it would make the ride a lot smoother.” He said this as he changed lanes right in front of a road train, only giving what must have been a millimetre between our rear bumper and the semi’s before he planted his foot on the accelerator and the little taxi shot off like it had rocket jets strapped to it.

“Sure.”

“So, what’s the rush about, detective?” We rounded a corner, the car seeming to go on two wheels for a few seconds.

“Well, it’s my first day and I figured it would be best to make a good impression.”

“First day? No offense, detective, but I never took you for a rookie.” My mind began to question why this cabbie was so curious? Why would he want to know any more about me other than if I could pay the fare? 

“Well…its my first day at the Zootopia police department, was transferred here a week back and I’ve just been getting the paper work sorted out. Used to work at Maw City.”

“Maw, huh? An old school buddy of mine use to be an attorney there; what beat did you work?”

“Narcotics for most of my time there…worked a bit at homicide for my last few years.”

“Narcotics…that must have been rough.”

“Yeah…it was.” The remainder of the drive was silent, broken by the occasional honk of traffic and the screeching of tyres. I looked out the window making a note to avoid mentioning my time in Maw again.


	2. New faces, Old wounds

The taxi continued swerving in-between traffic; like a sewing machine’s needle looping in and out of fabric as we closed the gap between the ZPD and us. The taxi cut off a few more cars, rounded a few more corners and broke the speed limit a few more times, the cabby all the while continuing his conversation with a calm demeanour, aloof to the surrounding peril. I, on the other hand, was experiencing a panic and heart attack at the same time; my claws rooted into the handle above the side window and the adjacent seat. 

We somehow survived the ordeal, and as the taxi stopped in front of the steps leading into the ZPD building, its looming shadow cast the taxi in foreboding darkness. I stepped out and went to the driver’s window, paying the cabby his fare as he finished telling me of how his niece barely escaped a hot air balloon crash. He gave me a wide smile, revealing his collection of yellowed teeth. “I hope you do well detective, I’m sure you’ll love the city.”

“Yeah, drive safe.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice!” He then slammed the taxi into gear, launching off and merging seamlessly into traffic without any hesitation. I chuckled as I walked up the steps towards the station’s entrance; the mammal drove as fast as he talked. I pushed open the station’s glass doors, taken in by its colossal size. The roof must have been at least ten stories high, the eight floors of the station rising up like a stack of pancakes. 

You wouldn’t see anything like this in Maw, due to a combination to the city planners being too incompetent to design a public building that could last the year without the pluming going to hell and the city administrators being too corrupt to not siphon all of the money out of the project and leave us with nothing but peanuts. 

I walked over to the front desk, attended by a portly cheetah, who was busy filing away files into a pink dossier folder. In front of him was a speakerphone, as I came to the desk he moved it out of the way, leaning forward to talk to me. “Can I help you sir?”

“Yes I’m Detective Gorden, I’ve been assigned to homicide from Maw PD.” He rolls backwards on his chair to get a large clip pad from a filing cabinet behind him, rolling forward and opening it up on the desk. On it was a large list of names, some information and dates. He skims through a few pages, running his index digit down a page before coming to a stop,

“Detective Gorden…would that be Henry Gorden?”

“The one and only.” I gave a shrug, tapping my paw against the marble desktop, a sliver of impatience driving up my spine, which, when you think about it, is painfully ironic; I was the one who was running late this morning. 

“Yep, I’ve got you right here. Okay so you’ll want to go to those elevators over there” He leans over the desk and points to a corner of the station. I take a few steps back and look; a selection of elevators in varying sizes streaked the wall. “And you’ll want to head to floor three, that’s 3H on the elevator, and just head down 'till you see the doors with ‘homicide’ on it, that’s the squad room.” 

I gave him a nod “Thanks”, I said as I turned to the elevators. I walked about three steps before the cheetah yelled out at me from across the lobby.

“Hang on, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?” I turned around; walking back to the desk so this guy would stop drawing attention from the other officers. He was now leaning over the desk, resting his bloated neck on his arms. 

“You’re from Maw City aren’t you?”

“…Yeah? What about it?”

“Did you happen to be there when Gazelle toured out that way awhile back?” Is that seriously what this is about? I’m running late and this guy is stopping me to ask a question about a has-been pop star whose greatest claim to fame was that she chose one of the most stupid stage names ever imagined? 

“I don’t know, never paid much attention to music while I was there.” I turn back and rush to the elevators. As I head over I notice how clean the porcelain floors of the station are, my reflection starring back at me. I wonder if the situation at the ZPD is the same as it was at Maw; the floors are clean but those who clean them are dirty as all hell.

I make it to the elevator, continuously pressing the button on the side of the metallic doors until they slid open. I stepped in before the doors closed, the sound of the lobby muted. I looked down at elevator buttons, lit up by yellow lights but worn out, the black numbers and letters faded. I pressed on the button with a three and a half-faded H on it. I pressed the button and after a few seconds the elevator begun to move upwards, the car filled with the sound of the ropes being threaded through its motors. 

As my mind wandered aimlessly in the silence, I thought back to the train car, to the feeling of uncertainty that washed over me; the taste of rust that stung my mouth and filled my nose. I knew that smell from somewhere, I had tasted the rust before. I rake my mind for answers, none coming. My temples slowly begin to thump against my brain once more, the coffee finally wearing off and the Chloral still lingering. But they were much softer this time, and I was able to subdue them. I started to think that it wasn’t just the Chloral that brought on these persistent headaches. 

With a ding, the elevator came to a stop, the doors sliding open to reveal the third floor. I stepped out onto the soft carpet, and started looking for the squad room. As I walked around I looked over the edge of the walkway, the numerous mammals scurrying along the floor below me looked no bigger than ants. Even elephants were reduced to the size of a beetle. The feeling of being so high above others was intoxicating. I guess that’s why back in Maw you never saw a city official in anything less than two stories. 

I soon found myself at the doors with HOMICIDE printed across the fogged glass. From outside I could hear the bustling workstation within. I pushed open the door, to my left there was a reception desk and in front of me there were steps leading to a large open space with about twenty desks. At the back left corner there was what I presumed to be an interrogation room and at the right corner was an office, the shutter blinds closed. ‘Must be the watch commander’s’ I thought to myself. 

I made my way to the front desk. Sitting behind it was a reindeer wearing a pink shirt, a white sleeveless jumper and black glasses. Her horns were adorned with various bracelets and woollen sleeves. She was busy typing away on a computer in front of her, humming a poppy song to herself and engrossed in her work. 

“Excuse me?” I said as I walked up to the desk. She jumped a bit in her chair and looked up at me. “Oh, sorry about that.” I said, alarmed by her startled reaction. 

“Oh don’t worry, I’m always a bit of a worrywart with new mammals. Is there anything I can help you with sir?” Now that she was looking up at me rather than at the computer I could see her more acute features. Her eyes were a beautiful brown, like the bark of an aging oak tree and she wore a rose red lipstick. On the right side of her neck was a furtoo of a Hummingbird, the blues and greens of the furtoo contrasting with the browns of the surrounding fur. 

“Yes, I’m detective Gorden, I’ve been assigned to homicide.” Her face lit up; as if I was a herald of good will, something I’d rarely been associated with in my past. 

“Detective Gorden! It’s good to have you here with us sir, I’m Becky Rain” She held out her hoof, and I grasped it for a pawshake; for a deer she had a remarkable strong grip, I flexed my aching paw out of view. “I’m sure you’ll fit in just fine here at the ZPD. I suggest you head over to the watch commander’s office over to the right, he’ll assign you a partner and tell you anything I can’t.” She had a big grin on her face, it was one of optimism and happiness; it was something you’d never see in Maw. 

“Thanks Becky, anything I should know before heading in there.”

“Always knock.” Her reply was instant, as if it was a question always asked. 

‘Okay, always knock’ I repeated in my head as I walked up the steps through the desks. 

Printed across the frosted glass of the office doors was SERGENT BULLPEN. I knocked twice on the wooden doorframe, and upon hearing “Come in” I opened the door and walked into the office. 

Behind a large wooden desk was a Musk Ox, busy reading papers from a large stack to his right that towered above us both. It looked like the gentlest gust of wind would send it crashing to the ground. What made me nervous was that a window at the back of the office overlooking the city was open, the shutter blind swinging to and fro by an idle wind. 

“Come have a seat Gorden.” He said to me, still reading over the papers. I walked up to the desk and pulled out a chair and sat down. “I’ve just been looking over your record.” He looks to the pile “All of it. I have to say, you’ve got quite a decorated history with the force.”

“Thank you sir.”

“You served with Maw PD for over a decade, correct?”

“Yes sir, started in narcotics back in 2009 was there for twelve years. I moved to homicide last year…before I quit.” He goes from the paper to me, studying my face. I wondered if he was reading something detailing why I left.

“Well Gorden, whatever your reasons were for leaving Maw, I can say that I’m happy to have you here at the ZPD. I’m sure you’re going to make a name for yourself real soon.”

I chuckled a little. “I’ll certainly try sir.”

He leans back in the chair and massages the bridge of his nose “I imagine that being in a job where you saw the worst of the worst must have taken its toll on you. Must have been hard fighting a losing battle for that long.”

“It was more like a losing war, sir.”

“And thirteen years is such a long war. I would have imagined you’d want to get away from police work forever.”

“Honestly sir, I needed to get away from that city more than anything. The whole damn place was rotten to the core. The police? We might as well have been called Cartel public relations, the majority of the department was that bad. I’m honestly surprised I didn’t end up chopped up in a garbage back in a ditch after it all.”

“Well if its any comfort to you Gorden, we here at the ZPD hold ourselves to a standard to uphold and protect this city. And trust me Gorden, she needs protecting.” He has a glass on the left of his table, it looks like its half full of scotch or something like that, the glass was dripping from condensation; he’d been drinking it for a while. “This city, for all its beauty, has got an underbelly as bad as Maw’s, if not worse. At least Maw’s dark side is on display, but here, its hidden. You fuck up in Zootopia, you’ll end up just like you would in Maw, except it’d be at the bottom of an elevator shaft.

“I understand sir, I’m not going to wind up at the bottom of that shaft.”

“That’s a reassurance Gorden; at least Maw’s spawned one good cop. Hopefully Maw won’t come back to try and bite you.” He sighs, grabs the glass and swings it back, drinking what was left of it in a single gulp. “I’m assigning you to Victoria Kloar. She’s a good cop, I’m sure you two will get along just fine. She’s the Lynx wearing a white shirt, can’t miss her. Do good Gorden.” 

“I will sir.” We both stood up, I held out my paw and he grasped it in a firm pawshake; his grasp was weaker than Becky’s. 

I walked out into the Bullpen, and spotted a Lynx sitting at a desk wearing a white shirt and wearing headphones, tapping her paws against the wooden desk to the sound of music. She had piercing in her right ear that glistened in the sun. As I approached I caught her attention, she looked up and pulled out the headphones. “Hi.” 

“Hey, you Victoria?”

“Yeah.” 

“I’m Henry, Henry Gorden. I’m your new partner.”

“Well Henry it’s good to meet you. Take a seat.” I sat down at the desk opposite hers. “Hey, if you don’t mind me asking, you’re the guy from Maw aren’t you?”

“Yeah, worked narcotics and homicide there.”

“That must be a tough place to grow up in, even harder to work there.”

“Oh I didn’t grow up in Maw. I was born in Argentlemur, in a town called Costa Escarpada, on the coast. Only lived there until I was five, but the one thing I remember is that it was right on the coast. Always had freezing winds from the sea rolling in, but it’d get so hot during the summer months it was like a blessing. You could hang out your tongue and it’d get all salty.”

“Why’d you move?”

“Dad use to work for a steel mill up at Buenos Beares. When it closed, he was high enough on the corporate ladder to just secure a position at one of the company’s mills up at Maw. So we packed our bags and left.” I leaned back in my chair, remembering the days mom would take me up a path that wound through the rocky coast line up a cliff that looked right out to the sea. “You know, the one thing I remember from that place, hell I don’t even remember our old house, is how close you could get to the sea. The roaring blue stretched out to the horizon, and my childish mind thought it stretched out forever, that it was only our little town and this remote path that was above the crashing waves. "Guess that’s why I wanted to leave Maw; damn city is land locked.”

“I would have figured the crime would have had something to do with it.”

“No, I got used to that.” 

I spent the rest of the day chatting with Victoria; she introduced me to a few other detectives around the room. I said my hellos and I talked about a few things; sport, the weather, a few detectives asked how life was if Argentlemur, or if I would ever visit again. Its funny, I was born there but I’d never really considered it home. Maw had made itself my home; it had been what moulded me into what I am. Still, a trip back home would be nice, to feel the ocean air rustling my fur, and its salty taste on my tongue, I should have gone back years ago. But then again, I probably would have never returned. 

What time I didn’t spend familiarising myself with the squad room and the detectives I spent looking over cold cases. I did it out of boredom, back in Maw I would have been assigned a case right away, but for now I was free of work. And although I’m sure it would change soon enough, it put me on edge. 

The train ride home was no less congested than it was this morning, except the demographic had totally shifted. Out of the nineteen other passengers in the car only one was prey, a sheep wearing a singlet and brown shorts. It was late and any other sheep would have been sound asleep, but here was this one, he looked wide-awake, as if staying up past sunset was absolutely normal for him. I noticed the plastic bag he was holding in his hoofs handing between his legs. As my attention focused to it, I noticed its scent. A double roach deluxe? I reasoned that he must have been delivering it for a friend; you’d never see a prey eating at Bug Burger. 

I stumble through my front door, getting to the kitchen and leaning against the counter. I massage my temples; I feel another headache coming on. I go to the fridge and pull out a bottle of Jackrabbit Daniels. I grab a glass out of my cupboard and fill it to the brim. I throw it back, my poison doing its work at subduing my headache till morning. After tossing my clothes in the laundry basket I went into the shower, the whiskey drowning the demons and preventing them from surfacing, I was able to enjoy the massaging of the water this time. 

I fall onto my bed, resting my head against the cool fabric of my pillow and mattress. I dragged the bed sheets up to my chest and look over at my bedside table. In the reflection of the moonlight filtering in through the slits in my blinds I can see my gun, phone and badge. I look up to the ceiling; the corners were starting to peal just like in the kitchen. ‘I need to buy some ceiling paint’ I thought to myself as I drifted off to sleep. 

The breeze is so nice.

I’m on a hill, there’s grass, tulips, roses and carnations as far as the eye can see

We sit by the oak tree, I’ve got my back to the tree, and she’s lying on me, snuggling into my chest

I am happy

I am at peace

Bang! She is gone

Bang! The tree and flowers are dead, the valley is wilted and smells of ash

“Caelnia!”

Bang bang bang

Ring…ring…ring. My eyes snap open and I shoot up, clutching my mattress and my chest as I rapidly breathe, my mind in a panic and my heart beating like I’d been running a marathon. I catch my breath as my eyes adjust to the darkness. I look over at my alarm clock on my bedside table, its digital numbers flashing with the passing seconds; I’d been in bed for just under two hours. 

I begrudgingly get up and walk over to my desk, picking up my ringing phone and press the answer button. “Hello?”

“Henry, that you?” It was Victoria, why was she calling me in the middle of the night?

“Yeah…how’d you get my number?”

“Central gave me your direct line.”

“Ah. What is it?”

“Get your coat on man, we’ve got our first call out.” I quickly hang up the phone and get out some clothes. After a quick shower to wake myself up I rush back into my room and get dressed, grabbing my phone, belt, gun and badge. I lock the door and run to the underground garage to get into my car and drive out to the location Victoria told me. While driving I reasoned that it wasn’t the Chloral that gave me those nightmares last night.


	3. Sooner or later God'll cut you down

The lack of any cars on the road contrasted the busyness of the city this morning; the dormant tarmac was disturbed only by a few stray pieces of rubbish, fluttering in the wind as the two danced. Mixed in with the late night jazz that was playing on the radio, it felt like something out of a movie, my subconscious narrating and taking the viewer along for the ride.

But who would waste their time with a story about a guy like me?

The peacefulness of the night evaporated as I came closer to Owl Street. Owl Street marked the beating heart of Zootopia’s nightlife, marketing itself to mammals who were not up to the standards of establishments such as the Oasis Hotel or Canopy Casino. If you wanted to go out for a good time after dark, and not worry too much about the legality of your evening, then Owl Street was where you went. The clubs that lined either side of the road flashed neon and blared techno music.

Partygoers and clubbers of all shapes, breeds and sizes roamed the streets like a primal herd. As the traffic lights ahead of me went from their hazy green to yellow, I idled my car to a stop, the red light flooding through the windscreen. As I waited for the lights, I looked out my left window.

I saw an Ox bouncer throw a wolf and ocelot out of a club that had corrugated iron walls and a circular blue neon sign above. As the Ox closed the club doors the wolf and ocelot continued fighting over whatever conflict they’d developed inside. They begun throwing growls and gestures fuelled with hostility at each other, the crowd marching on as a nightly occurrence ran its course.

The lights turned green and I continued driving. Rounding a corner ahead, I noticed a few females wearing clothes too short for the cold, hanging around the curb like sirens on rocks. They gave me inviting looks but I drove on, not even giving them a second glance. I knew I had many vices, but prostitutes weren’t one of them. Besides, I wasn’t here to arrest hookers.

The street I had turned onto signalled an end to the nightclubs and pubs that erupted along Owl Street. This one had large sheds and storage facilities along its sides and an industrial, lifeless feeling to it. It was like Zootopia’s own little slice of Maw.

But despite being empty of any clubs, the street was still alive with flashing lights. The reds and blues of squad cars parked up ahead painted the concrete with portraits of shadows dancing amidst the stale night. Pulling up behind a squad car I stepped out into the frigid air, the coldness of the night penetrating my fur and making me regret not wearing another shirt underneath my jumper.

I spotted Victoria waiting outside a Storage lot; giving me a wave as I walked over. She was smoking a cigarette, emitting smoke in rhythmic puffs like a train and was wearing a blue coat; I could see she was still wearing her pyjamas underneath. “Glad you could make it Henry, get any sleep?”

“Hardly.”

She laughed a little, taking another whiff of her cigarette and blowing it into the sky above. “Same. Well, lets get this over with, won’t be long until the vultures get here.” She took a final inhale of her cigarette and threw it on the floor, crushing it under her foot. We walked inside the lot and through an open lobby where officers and forensics went around performing their duties. It led to a hallway with rentable units flanking us either side. The majority of the units towered above us, the roller doors secured to the floor by padlocks larger than my palm.

“You got any idea what we’re walking into Kloar?” I asked her as we rounded a corner.

She gave me a shrug, sidestepping an elephant taking photos of blood splatter along the walls and floor. “Nope. Apparently Bullpen handballed us this case because everyone else had cases and the wonder duo was busy.” She looked at me, her calm and relaxed composer hiding away the fact that she was tired. I doubted that I was as successful. “Don’t worry; we crack this one, we’ll have at least one night’s sleep before the next.”

“That’ll be more sleep than I ever got back in Maw.”

She gave me a concerned look. “You bag that place a lot you know?”

“Out of habit.” We remained silent for the rest of the walk, our pace increasing.

We approached the end of the hallway. In front of us was one of the units with its door open, the entrance webbed in yellow police tape and a pair of officers standing either side. Ducking underneath the tape, I surveyed the room as Victoria stayed out discussing the nature of the call with the officers. Two filament lights, flickering indiscriminately as moths buzzed around their luminous cylinders, cast the room in weak light. Blinding flashes of light lit up the room as forensics took photos of the scene and the body.

Lying in the corner was a young impala, a doe by the look of her, no more than twenty-five years of age. She was naked with her head limp to one side and her tongue hanging out. Her eyes were wide open, an expression of terror etched into her pupils. There was a chunk of flesh missing from her neck, the gaping hole showing the internal flesh and the surrounding fur stained crimson from the bleed out.

I put on my rubber gloves as I approached her body, kneeling down right before her, the smell of her corpse infiltrating my senses. My ears swivelled as I heard Victoria enter the room, grasping her mouth with her paw. “Oh sweet lamb of God.” She said, clearly shaken. She stood behind me as she got her gloves out of her pocket.

“You alright Vic?”

“Yeah.” She swallowed as she put on her gloves and stepped closer, kneeling down next to me. “Just caught me off guard.”

“Don’t worry…who called it in?”

“Night guard. Was making his rounds and spotted this unit with a broken padlock so he came closer to have a look. Noticed the smell and opened it up, called it in immediately after.” I nodded as I put my paw to the doe's face, moving away a piece of hair from her eye and lowering the eyelid, studying the out edges of the cornea.

“We got a time of death?”

She shook her head. “The coroner is coming to give it the eye over, but we won’t have anything exact until the autopsy. The same goes for the cause of death. But telling by that gaping hole in her neck, I doubt we’ll need a tox report for it.”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at me, perplexed. “What?”

I leaned in closer, getting a good look at the doe. Her eyes stared back at me and, unlike mine; they penetrated me with their lifeless gaze. “Look around her fur.”

Victoria leaned in, studying the doe's thigh. “Notice anything?”

“Yeah, have you ever seen an impala up close before?”

“Yeah, dated one back in college.”

“…Fur seems a bit darker than what I’d expect an impala to look like.” Victoria leaned in, pressing an index digit along the tip of the doe’s ear. The digit ends of her gloves were a sandy red.

“Sand?” Victoria rubbed her digits together, the sand sprinkling to the floor. “Would mean she’s from Sahara Square or Canyon lands.”

“How far of a drive would that be from here, quickest route?”

She leaned back, rubbing her snout with her clean paw while mulling the question over. “An hour, forty minutes minimum if you were to cut through Hyenahurst using the two eighty and get every green light. At longest it would be an hour and a half trip.”

“So let’s put a time of death at roughly two hours ago. Could have snuck in while the guard was on break. But then there is the bleed out from the wound…you familiar with bovine biology Victoria?”

“Last time I read a biology book was back in high school.” She put her paw near the wound, examining the flesh around its gaping hole. “But if I were to guess, looks like a lot of this bleed out is from a puncture of her right carotid artery. Might also be from her right jugular vein.”

“She would have died from bleeding out in minutes.”

“That’s if she lived long enough to die from bleeding out: with a puncture like that, she probably died from choking on her own blood.” Victoria stood up, taking off her gloves. “What are you getting at Gorden?”

“Its just there doesn’t seem to be enough blood for this doe to have died from bleed out, even if she died from dry drowning, plus bovines can’t clot for shit. If she died from bleed out, there would be way more blood here.” I stand up, taking off my gloves and distancing myself from the stench that was becoming unbearable. “I think that chunk was taken out of her after she was killed; after the heart stopped beating.”

Victoria takes a deep breath. “So we’re dealing with some twisted psychopath.”

“I’d imagine so. Stain all over the fur implies they didn’t care for getting messy. Indulged in it. I’ve got a feeling they’ve done this before.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Its just the scene. It’s fantasy enactment…it’s their vision. They’ve used her body as a canvas for their own over-fetishisation.”

“Fetishisation?” She looks at the body. “So…we could be dealing with someone who’s into predprey play?”

“Yeah…probably mixed in with some mental disorder like a volatile psyche cocktail. Schizophrenic perhaps, definitely has some sort of delusional disorder.”

“Could it mean they’re an erotomanic?” She got out a notepad and begun scribbling down notes. I’d do the same if I hadn’t left mine back at home.

“Makes sense. Like I said, this…whole thing, it’s their vision. If they’re a erotomanic like you said, then they would have viewed this doe as someone who was in love with them. Someone they could be intimate with.” I look to Victoria, and then back at the body “And with the intimacy came the expression of their love.”

“Love?”

“Well, not in the normal sense of the word, but we aren’t dealing with a normal mammal. To them, this is the ultimate expression of love. To love another mammal to death.”

“Sheepus, if I knew we were walking into this I would have stayed in bed.”

“Well, better to start on it now while we’re irritable than in the morning when we’re well rested.” I walked out the room, holding up the tape for Victoria to duck under as the coroner arrived with the body bag and gurney. I caught up with her as she walked down the hallway

“So, this thing about Fetishisation and the perp being psychopathic and whatnot, you read that from a book?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I was wondering, does one of those books have a chapter or two on jumping to conclusions?”

I remained silent as we continued to walk. Reflecting back on what I had said in the unit, I realised that I had made quite a few assumptions. I guess that’s what happens when you rely on your instincts so heavily that you doubt the integrity of evidence. “Listen Henry, while I don’t doubt your judgment,, you’ve been playing this game a lot longer than me, I do think we need to slow down.” We passed a few more mammals in the lobby before getting outside, the freezing air making me shiver beneath my coat. “We don’t even have the coroner’s report yet and you’re already constructing a story. And its like in all the textbooks, you’re probably going to try and…bend the narrative to fit it. I mean...we don't even know if this had any sort of sexual motivation behind it. Could be as simple as the victim and a assailant getting into an argument, assailant being a large predator has a swipe at the doe and takes a gash out of her neck. Panics and dumps the body; happened a thousands times before.”

“It was just a little seed of a thought. But this kind of thing is never an isolated incident; it never happens in a vacuum. It’s either something that’s started or has been going on for awhile. It just doesn't seem like something accidental to me.”

“Seeds can grow into trees if you give them enough water Henry.” She sighs, getting out a cigarette and lighting it, the temporary warmth of the flame touching my cheeks. “Listen, I don’t doubt that you’re on to something. Only a…sick twisted fuck could do what we saw in there to another mammal, but you can’t make presumptions; you prejudice yourself. Wait till after we get a name and then we’ll start rooting out shit.”

“Don’t worry Victoria, it was just an idea.”

“Well for now keep it that way.” She took a puff of her cigarette just like she did before, but this time it was deeper, like she needed a stronger hit of nicotine. “We can head home, try and catch up on lost sleep and tackle this in the morning. They’ll have a name for us at least by then.”

“Hope so.” I began to walk back to my car, Victoria heading to hers, a red Zord pick-up, worn but in a far better shape than my Cowdi. As I walked a thought pinged in the back of my mind about what Victoria had said earlier. “Hey Vic!” I called out.

She turns back to me. “Yeah?”

“What did you mean when you said ‘vultures’ before?”

“Murders were pretty common back in Maw weren’t they Henry?”

“Yeah, like getting wet in Rainforest.”

“Well here, they’re like finding a bloody pearl in the desert. And every reporter wants to claim that pearl.” She then got into her Ute, and as I turned towards my car I saw several news vans rounding the corner. The vultures must have been listening over the radio all night, waiting for news of a corpse long dead. As they approached I drove off back into the night, performing a u-turn down the road to head past Owl Street and back home.

As I rounded the corner onto Owl, flashing blues and reds of a squad car had joined the neon lights of the nightclubs. By the look of it, the confrontation between the wolf and ocelot had turned violent; a pair of cops wrestled the wolf to the ground while the ocelot lay on his back clutching his nose, blood splatter all over the pavement. This time, the passing mammals stood and watched.

 

\----------

 

The heat of the sun was a welcome change to the cold of last night. I bathed in its warmth as it touched my fur and my digits sunk into the sand as I walked along. ‘It was a good idea to go for a walk along Cockleshell Beach’ I thought to myself as gentle waves crashed into the shore and lapsed over my feet and the sand. I was around Sahara square after all, and it would be a shame to not spend the lovely day out in the sun. Besides, I’d rather stay away from downtown for a while; it’d be so busy around about now.

There were heaps of mammals out enjoying the sun and cool water. Parents lying their backs on towels soaking in rays or relaxing under an umbrella lined the beach like ships at dry dock, kits playing in the water dotted the near-shore like buoys. Everyone was so happy, the atmosphere of joy was intoxicating; I could wander up and down this beach until I was old and grey.

Alas, as the phone in the back pocket of my shorts begun to vibrate, I was faced with the harsh reality that such things would never come to pass.

I grabbed it, having a look at the number on the screen. It was one of my registered contacts, and one of the only callers I’ve had in the past month. ‘Okay, time to kiss ass.’ I thought to myself as I put the phone to my ear, sidestepping a Wildcat cub that was running into the water with no clothes on, his mother and father in pursuit with a pair of bathers. “Yellow?”

“Cut the shit you know whose calling.”

“Morris! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I smirk as I hear him give a deep sigh over the phone; polar bears were the easiest mammals to toy with “You owe this fucking pleasure to your sheer fucking incompetence.”

“Whoa, calm down there Morris my friend, where has this sudden spike in hostility come from?”

“Where-WHERE HAS MY HOSTILITY COME FROM? YOU FUCKING KNOW WHERE ITS FUCKING COME FROM!” I held the phone away from my ringing ear, looking around at the families staring at me with shock and disgust.

“Easy Morris, there are children present.”

“I couldn’t fucking care if you were at your dear old grandmother’s funeral giving her eulogy. You are here in this city to complete a job that has a lot of my money resting on it, not fulfil your own sick deviant fantasies.”

“Oh Morris you should know me better than that. I’m here to do a job, and I’ll get it done.”

“Well I want you to do it without leaving a fucking trail of bodies behind you, because guess what you twat? You actually have to work to keep the cops in this city off your back. It helps all of us if you don’t act like a twisted cunt and do your fucking job!”

“Morris, don’t worry, we’re partners in this aren’t we?”

“No we are fucking not! Listen here boy; you and I are not equals. You may think you’re in charge, but I only let you think you’re in charge. You may think you’re a friend, that you have power and that you can use it to make a name for yourself in this city, but that’s not true, because guess what? I’m the one whose letting you think those things. And whether you’re who you are now, or if your just some pusher on the street, if you fuck me around, I’ll get rid of you just the same.”

“…You done Morris? I know you didn’t ring me up just to chew me out and make daddy proud of you running the family biz?”

“Watch your fucking mouth boy, my father may be gone but don’t you dare underestimate me. I’m twice the mammal he ever was; don’t you dare forget it.” ‘Oh goody, struck a raw nerve’ I thought to myself as Morris finally got to the point of the conversation. “Listen, your informants at Little Rodentia. Ring him using the number I’m going to text you. Get the info and do what you need to do. Leave no loose ends.”

“Thank you Morris, always a pleasure. I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the results of our venture.”

I went to hang up the phone, when Morris spoke up again. “One more thing”

“What?”

“You fuck this up, or try any shit, no matter who you think has your back, no matter what you once were or once part of, you’ll be the next one the ZPD finds in a dumpster. Capisce?” A toothy grin grew across my face as I hung up the phone. The bear, for all of his strengths and his ‘smarts’, could be played like a fiddle. Hit the right nerve and strike a few notes and I could have him singing along like a symphony. His arrogance had always been his downfall, and it would be time and time again.


	4. I am the One who Runs from both the Living and the Dead

The sun filtering through the windows into the squad room was a welcome change to the bitter cold of last night. I’d left for work earlier than usual this morning; the drive to the station striking a balance between the controlled chaos of the day and the peaceful silence of night. 

Leaning back in my chair I rub my face, getting out some lingering sleep from the corners of my eyes. As I let out a weary yawn, a deer on the desk across from me watched me with alertness as I exposed my teeth. 

Despite my biology, I was by no stretch of the imagination a night-faring mammal, getting up from bed this morning was torture. I had made myself an extra strong coffee; its buzz had gotten me through the drive here, the mundane elevator ride and walk to the squad room. After I said hi to Murphy, a hartebeest that talked with a thick Hissisippi accent and was always chewing tobacco, the coffee pumping through my veins dried up, and as I slumped into my chair fatigue wrapped its claws around me and I soon found myself nodding off. 

As I sat in my chair fighting off the urge to fall asleep, the doors to the squad room swung open. Turning in my chair to see who walked in, I saw Victoria wearing navy blue jeans and a white button-up shirt, her badge and gun on her belt. I noticed she was carrying two takeaway coffee cups. 

As she walked over I gave her a wave, nearly falling asleep and landing face-first on my desk. She chuckled and gave me a smile, sitting down behind her own and passing over the coffee. Grabbing it, I placed the cup on my right beside my computer monitor. “Morning Henry. You’re here early.” She said as she got comfortable in her chair. 

“Decided to beat the rush. Besides, I couldn’t sleep. You manage to get any?”

“None at first. When I got home I just lay awake in bed for hours staring at the ceiling. On the bright side, I’ve made a reminder to go and get a new tin of paint, but yeah, I did eventually get some sleep. Still, the dreams I had last night didn’t help me sleep any easier. ”

“Oh I’ve been there plenty of times.” I picked up the cup, the smell of freshly grounded coffee beans filled my nose and darted around my brain like a pinball,, lighting up my neurons like birthed stars against the infinite void of space. “So, is that what these are for?”

“Oh hell yes.” She picks up her own cup, swirling it around a bit before taking off the lid “Take a drink of this stuff and you’ll feel like someone’s hooked you up to the grid.” As she began drinking her own coffee ,I looked down at my own. 

I allowed my senses to be swamped by the coffee, by its smell and the warmth of the cup as it tantalized my digits. Sure, it smelt good, but I’d become accustomed to a fine home-brewed coffee; one of the few things I could thank Maw for. I always thought that, if I’d ever fall out of police work, I could become a barista.

I took the cup back, and as soon as the steaming coffee passed my lips and lapsed onto my taste buds, the feelings that my brain was experiencing from the smell multiplied tenfold. I felt like I was experience the equivalent of an acid trip, and after only a single gulp I was forced to put the cup down. “Holy shit.” I muttered under my breath.

“Oh yeah. It’ll do that the first few times. But trust me, you’ll get used to it.” She said, continuing to drink from her cup. After about twenty seconds she’d finished, and threw it to a bin over across the room. It soared across the room, landing right in the bin and not even hitting its brim.

“Where did you get this from?” I asked her as I took another gulp, my mind indulging once again in the coffee’s high.

“From this little café down on Cud Street. I should take you there someday; the mocha they make is something to die for.”

“I’ll have to go there sometime.” As the coffee swirled down my throat and my brain was made alive with thoughts, something pinged in the back of my head. “I just remembered, Becky told me the coroner rang up about an hour before I got here while night shift was packing up. They’ve got an autopsy report on that impala, figured you and I would go and check it out.”

I stand up, taking the last drink of my coffee and looked around for a bin, noticing one by the doors. “We better get going. You know where they keep the unmarked cars?”

“Yeah, follow me.” She got up from her desk and we made our way to the doors. 

“See you later guys, hope the case goes well!” Becky said to us as we left. 

‘It never does’ my subconscious replied. 

Following Victoria out of the squad room, we walked over to a set of elevators on our left. These were not the ones I’d been taking to get up from the first floor, and since there were no other elevator doors on the bottom floor, they must head straight to a car park below the station. 

Victoria walked up to the doors and pressed one of the buttons, far less worn than those on the elevators I’ve been using. I glanced over to Victoria as the elevator began to descend. I noticed has she was biting her lip, as if there were words she wanted to say but hesitation danced in her mind. She looks over to me “Hey Henry?” 

“Yeah Vic?” 

“When I was lying awake last night, I thought about what you said.” 

“Did you come up with anything else?” 

“No…” She looks away from me to the elevator doors, letting out a deep sigh that was heavy with pent up stress and anxiety. “I was just, praying that you were wrong.”

“I much as I hope that you're right Victoria, I just know that this wasn't an accident. Something is telling me that this thing is just scratching the surface of something much bigger. Like intuition.”

“Well what’s your intuition telling you now?”

“That whatever this is, it’s going to develop into one shit storm after another. I tell you this Vic: this thing has got more scope than just the doe. She’s the catalyst to discovering something much bigger.”

“Is that seriously what you think?”

“I don’t know.” I smacked my lips, the coffee making my mouth feel a little arid and dusty. “It’s just back in Maw, everything was connected. You could trace a mugging to a gang war or a company merger to a mob hit. This seems like something that is linked back to something else, like a web, and we just can’t see it. Might mean were already tangled up in it and we’re just too preoccupied to see the approaching spider.”

I felt the elevator come to a stop. With the ‘ding’ of a bell, the doors opened up to a hallway, the walls painted cream with a navy blue stripe running horizontally either side. It ran for about five meters before opening up to the car park, a counter covered in a metal grid marked a security office to our left. On the left side of the counter was a wooden door with VEHICLE WARDEN/CHIEF MECHANIC printed in gold against its stained wood. 

Victoria walked up to the counter, tapping on the mesh a few times. “Hey Nick, you in?” I heard a shuffling from inside followed by the rummaging of boxes and the clattering of metal hitting the floor. Victoria mouthed ‘oops’ as she recoiled back slightly.

“Oh son of a fucking bitch!” There was a momentary pause of sound from within the office, as if whoever was inside realised they were within earshot of other mammals, and was screaming internally. “Uh…Hang on I’ll be a sec!” The sound of metal being picked up from the ground and placed in cupboards and boxes emitted from the office once more before going silent. The sound of paw pads tapping across the tile floor started from somewhere deep in the office and steadily became louder as it approached, stopping at the desk before a red fox popped his head up behind the counter. His left eye was a rich emerald green while his right was lavender and it looked in a different direction to his left. “Hi Vic! Good to see ya!” He turned his head to face me with his good eye while his right looked towards Victoria, as if he was watching us both. “And who may you be my good sir?”

“Henry, Henry Gorden.” I extended my arm through a gap in the grid, Nick grasping it with his comparably smaller paw and shaking it with all of his might. He gave me a big smile, flashing a collection of pearly white teeth. 

“Name’s Nick, Nick Smith. Well Henry, it’s good to meet ya. So, what can I do you two for?” 

“We’ve got a body waiting for us at the morgue.” I said

“Hang on, I’ll get you an unmarked.” He grabbed a clipboard and hopped down from the desk. He walked to a set of keys locked within a glass cabinet above him. Looking down on him from the desk, I noticed that he walked with a limp on his right leg and wore a shoulder brace over his blue uniform.

He grabbed a stepladder and set it down in front of the cabinet, walking up and grabbing a key ring from his belt, unlocking the cabinet and looking over his clipboard. “Hey Gorden?”

“Yeah?” 

“Is your name spelt G-O-R-D-O-N or with an E-N?”

“E-N.”

“Thanks” He flipped a page on the clipboard. “Ah! Yep, here you two are.” He grabs a key from the cabinet and locks it, stepping carefully down from the ladder and returning to the desk, handing the keys to Victoria’s extended paw. “Okay so your body’s registered at Raven’s Rock Morgue. Victoria here should know the way but if you need to, you could use the GPS, but don’t count on it, the systems these things use isn’t worth a pint of piss. Yours is the tan Crown Vic in park thirteen, call sign is Ink One-One.” 

“Anything else?” Victoria asks.

“Transmission on that one’s a little flimsy, me and the boys are going to have a look at it this weekend, but for now try and avoid rapidly changing gear uphill unless you want to risk a stall.” 

“Thanks Nick. Have a good one.” 

“You too guys.” As we walked away he hoped down and got back to whatever work he was doing before we came. We passed numerous unmarked and patrol cars until we got to a tan Crown Vic that sat alone in park, number ‘13’ printed onto the concrete in front of it. I went around to the passenger’s side while Victoria climbed into the driver’s seat, putting the keys into the ignition and filling the car park with the primal roar of the car’s engine. 

We headed up a ramp leading out to the station’s aboveground car park. Victoria drove the car around to the front of the station where the charismatic taxi driver had dropped me off, and where my Cowdi lay parked now. It was sandwiched between two squad cars and was basking in the morning sun that caused its paint to further peel. ‘Lucky son of a bitch’ I thought to myself as Victoria followed the path of my taxi driver, waiting for an entrance before merging in with the traffic and driving us to the morgue. 

Despite the traffic around us, the rumbling engines, the noxious fumes, the blaring horns and screeching tires and the oh-so-many traffic violations, the drive was quiet. I had my elbow on the window seal and was resting my head on my paw; watching as the buildings passed by like mountains. The cabin’s silence was broken only by the quiet lulls of the radio and the muted sounds of the outside world. 

“Where do you think we should go once we get the autopsy report?” Victroia said as we rounded a corner.

I took my arm off of the window and shifted in my seat so I could face Victoria “I’m thinking we should contact her relatives, find out anything that her immediate family might know; she could have been seeing someone. We should then expand to her life outside of her family; where she lived, where she worked and if she was in a relationship that her parents may not have approved of.”

“You think it was something personal? Lover’s quarrel or some rivalry?”

“No, I’ve still got a feeling that we’re dealing with some sort of psychotic. But I’ve also got a feeling we’re not dealing with someone insane.” She goes to say something but pauses, a perplexed look on her face. 

“Okay, now while I could chew you out for sounding like you’d given that seed some water, I’ve just got to ask you, how can whoever did this not be considered insane? Someone ripped out a doe’s fucking neck Henry. That sounds pretty fucking crazy to me.” 

“You know, I think I worded that just a little wrong. What our suspect did last night was express what they viewed as love, and from that we can build an idea of what their view of lust and affection is. From this we can construct how they view world. It’s a twisted and warped picture for sure, and from this we know that they’re unstable. But just because they’re unstable doesn’t mean they’re insane; being insane and unstable are two completely different things.”

“While I’m sure any psychologist who’s passed high school would beg to differ, entertain me Henry, how are the two different?” Her voice was full of joke mockery. 

I gave her a smile, continuing our conversation “Well Victoria, insane can be given to a mammal who has no conscious awareness of the consequences of their actions. A kid who shoots up a diner because he’s lived a life of trauma can be called insane because he’s been sculpted into something that is sub-mammal; he’s unable to understand his actions and feel empathy for those he hurts. Now lets take the sick motherfucker who took a chunk of this doe. If it is an expression of their love, then they understand that their actions have a consequence; this being the application of their love and lust onto a canvas, the doe, and that it would have an affect on that canvas. Now, I admit, this may not mean they understand the concept of mortality, but it does mean they know actions have consequences. And with that, Victoria, our suspect, if this wasn’t an accident, is not insane but instead unstable.”

“You could have just said that sociopathic was a more appropriate word.” We pulled up at an intersection, the dashboard GPS stating that we were around twenty minutes away from the morgue. “And Sheepus Christ Henry, you yourself sound a little unstable. Maw really did a number on you didn’t it?” 

“That my friend is the understatement of the century.” I gave her a light-hearted smile, trying to downplay the significance of what I had just said. I’d rather avoid coming off as the depressed melodramatic cop to Victoria, firstly because I’d doubt that it would make working together any easier and secondly because the depressed melodramatic cop from Maw would be a dead melodramatic cop from Maw.

“I bet a shrink could write a book about you.” We drove for another fifteen minutes, cutting through the middle of downtown across the Maribou River, we pulled into the morgue’s car park. We were in one of the old areas of the city; remnants of it’s early beginnings hundreds of years ago. Maw was an equally old city, it’s beginnings dating back even further than Zootopia’s. Maw found it’s fortune off of the hardships of the slave trade and industrial revolution, but unlike Zootopia, city planners didn’t care much for conserving the marks of Maw’s past. 

On the outside, the Morgue looked like something out of a Dovecraftian novel. The steps that led up to it from the car park were large and intimidating, near impossible for anything smaller than a fox to walk up. Its walls were a deep charcoal colour, mighty columns held up the roof overhanging the front of the building, making it look like an ancient temple. The capital of each column had been sculpted into a raven perched atop skulls. Whoever designed it certainly wanted to install a sense of dread into anyone who walked up those steps. 

As we walked up the final steps we came to the entrance; two oak doors large enough for an elephant to walk through. Above the doors was a crest showing a raven holding a sickle and femur bone, below it in golden lettering was ‘RAVEN’S ROCK MORGUE’, standing out against the canvas of black. 

I opened the door for Victoria, and I was taken back by how much the inside contrasted the look of the outside. The floors were cleaner than back at the ZPD and the walls were painted stark white. The strain that the bright lights were causing my eyes forced me to rapidly blink to adjust. Victoria looked down as she rubbed her eyes “I’ve come here at least a dozen times and these damned lights always hurt my eyes.” She sighed, looking up and blinking a few times. “Come on, let’s go.” I followed behind her, my eyes finally adjusting to cope with the intense light. 

The hallway led us to a waiting room, a television mounted in the top left corner, the room led off to another hallway ahead of us. To our right was a reception desk, a Pangolin at the counter, who looked up as Victoria and I approached. “Can I help you?”

“Hi there, I’m Victoria Kloar and this is Henry Gorden. We’re with ZPD homicide, we’re here to have a look at a body associated with a case we’re investigating.” 

The Pangolin looks over her computer screen, tapping away at the keyboard and scrolling with the mouse before coming to a stop. She then pushed back in her chair and leaned below the desk, grabbing a clipboard and pen. “Hmm… your body is the one from last night that was recovered from James Street. We’ve got her over at Body Holding, I’ll call up the coroner, they'll take you to have a look, won’t be a moment.”

“Thank you.” I said as the attendant grabbed a phone receiver and pressed one of the speed dial numbers. I wandered over to where Victoria was standing in front of the television. Walking up next to her, looking up at what was on the screen. “What’s on?”

“Nothing yet, I’m looking to see if they’ve got anything from last night on.”

“Really?” I looked at my watch “But it’s like, seven thirty, you’d have kids watching right now. I wouldn’t even expect the morning shows to be reporting that sort of stuff.” 

“They’ve got it on a nocturnal channel, about now is when they start their late-night news block.” I looked back up at the television, only just noticing that the news anchor was a bat. 

“You think they’d have anything already?”

She laughed. “Never underestimate reporters in this city Henry. They’re just as much of a pain in the arse as the criminals…well, maybe not as much: a bit more I think.” 

“They’re that curious?”

“Oh yeah. After that Night-howler thing from a few years back every single mammal who was on the city’s payroll was under suspicion. Mammals feared the government more than the damn mafia.” She looked away from the television to me “Can you believe that?”

“From where I’m from Victoria, that is very believable indeed. Mammals fear what they don’t understand. No one understood at first why predators went savage, so, as what I’m guessing was a social defence mechanism, they attributed it to something that defines predators.” 

“Biology.” 

I nodded. “And I’m guessing the protests weren’t the worse things that happened with every deliberate fuck up that Ewe bitch made.”

“That, Henry, is the true understatement of the century. There were riots everywhere; predators and prey rioting, smashing up shit and burning down entire blocks. I can tell you from experience Henry, Bellwether never needed to manipulate a flower to throw the city into chaos.” She takes a deep breath, reaching for a packet of cigarettes but returning it to her pocket. 

“Those riots were such a fucking mess.” She said as she got her paw and rubbed it over her head, pulling her ears back before they flopped back upright. 

“I feel sorry for you, seeing stuff like that.”

“Can’t imagine that it would have been worse than what you’ve seen.”

“Well…not really. I mean Maw was bad, and I don’t doubt that it’s gotten worse. The crime there is like an untreatable cancer that you can still find everywhere. I remember that it’s most obvious symptom was poor bookkeeping. But even then…it was organised. Controlled chaos is the best way to describe it I think.” I took a deep breath “But what happened here way back, it was just pure chaos.”

“I think you’ve hit the nail right on the head Gorden.” She looks back up at the news channel, nothing seeming to be on “I just hope this isn’t somehow related to that. I hope it…that it isn’t like a ghost from this city’s past coming back to haunt it.” We stood in silence together, just looking up at the television but not paying any attention to what was on, as if our minds wanted to preoccupy themselves but weren’t taking anything in. I smacked my lips and swallowed as my mouth became dry, a taste other than coffee beginning to swell in it.

Rust. 

Instinctively I turned my head towards the hallway, an antelope walked into the room and over to us. He was wearing a white lab coat and a blue hospital gown underneath, a surgical mask hanging around his neck. I turned my body to face him, Victoria doing the same as she noticed him approach. “Hello detectives” He extended his hoof to Victoria, who shook it and then to me “I’m Abraham Valentine. I was the coroner who arrived at your crime scene and examined the body.” After our pawshake he put his hoofs back into the pockets of his coat. “We’ve got her body in holding. I'll take you to have a look.” 

“I have to tell you detectives,” He said as we walked down the hallway “In all my forty years, I have never dealt with a case quite like this one.” 

Ahead of us the hallway split, one way turning left, and the other leading to a pair of swivelling metal doors with BODY HOLDING printed across them along with numerous biohazard warnings. The doors opened up to a large rectangular room, the walls lined with two rows of mortuary refrigerator doors. In the centre of the room were two metal tables positioned parallel to each other. On one of them lay a body, covered in a white blanket. 

As Victoria and I walk over to the left side of the table, Valentine went to the right, leaning over and furling the blanket to the head of the doe. Her head lay limp to one side, her eyes were closed and her lips had turned a purple colour. It was weird to think so, but she almost looked peaceful. 

“Well detectives, I’m sure you don’t need me to explain the doe’s cause of death.” He snaps on a pair of rubber gloves, removing the blanket further to reveal the doe’s neck and it’s gapping hole. “She died as a result of her right carotid artery feeding back blood into her heart and lunges. While it’s possible that the heightened state of shock may have sent her into cardiac arrest, but considering her lunges were so full of blood and mucus, I’d say she would have dry drowned.” 

He then moves his hoofs to the wound, placing them around the exposed flesh. “The puncture to her carotid artery was from someone taking a deep chunk of flesh out. This wasn't taken out with anything like a machete or blunt object, it was definitely by another mammal. You’d be looking at a mammal with a lot of jaw power to cut through flesh, a Hyena, for example.” 

“Any implications on how the bite was taken?” Victoria asks.

“What do you mean?”

“She means is there any evidence that it was intentional or…”

“Oh no” He shakes his head “The bite was taken with intension.” He puts his hoof near the top of the wound, grabbing a dangling artery and holding it in the palm of his hoof. “The arteries have been torn outwards, the flesh running horizontally to her chest is mattered while running vertically it’s much cleaner, muscle and skin tissue are cut by clear tooth incisions. Means that they sunk their jaw into her neck deeply, pressing down hard before clamping and ripping out the flesh, quite aggressively I must add.” He leans back away from the doe “If it was accidental, then there would be no signs of such significant pressure.” What he just said perked my interests, I went to ask a question about what he meant when Victoria spoke up. 

“You said before that they tore out the chunk aggressively. But it was her carotid artery that was punctured. When we arrived at the scene, my partner noted that there was very little blood if she was bleeding out, even if she was dry drowning.”

“Well, detectives…that is where it gets a little…odd. We ran a contemporary toxicology screening of her blood. We found traces of methamphetamines and neurotic hormonal steroids.”

“So she was drugged with meth and pastor?”

“Yes, at least that’s what the CT detected. I’m sure that you’re both aware that pastor is, for a lack of better words, a day rape drug. Now what makes pastor so…popular , is when mixed with certain substances it causes the blood to thicken, less of it gets to brain and as such the victim becomes less coherent. Mix that in with the influx of a sex drive…well I’m sure you know the result.”

“Yes.” Victoria said, swallowing a lump in her throat. 

“And unfortunately for this doe it appears the pastor was used to make her an easier target” He grabs the bottom half of the blanket, quickly rolling it up and revealing the doe’s crotch. “There is evidence of vaginal penetration; I have no doubt that she was raped.” Her crotch had been shaved and her vagina was mangled, the skin around her entrance had a red rash while the vagina itself was welted and scarred. I kept myself steady; reminding myself that I’d seen worse, and that I’d probably see worse by retirement. I looked to Victoria; her face seemed emotionless, like she couldn’t react. “There is evidence of bleaching around her vagina and surrounding crotch, most likely to remove any DNA residue. Swabs indicate that they used hydrogen peroxide. A relatively easy bleaching agent to come across so I'm afraid that doesn't narrow down the search for your suspect.” Valentine then took the blanket and unfurled it to cover up the doe. 

“Is there anything else you can tell us about what happened to her, anything that could give us any leads?” I ask him as he walks over to a sink, disposing of his gloves and washing his hoofs.

“Other than the obscurity of it? Not much.” He turns off the tap and dries his hoofs, walking back over to us. “I won’t have much more to tell you until I get the thorough toxicology report back, but whoever bit into her, it was a predator. Large one too with very strong jaw power; hyena comes to mind but there are further tests run, we’re going to see if we can get and tooth impressions out of the flesh to narrow it down.”

“Thank you for your help.” Victoria said as we turned to leave. 

“No problems detectives, I’ll let you know of any updates.” We leave Body Holding and into the waiting room. As Victoria headed to the counter I wandered over to the television, curious to see if, be it a one in a million chance, they were covering anything on our case. As luck would have it, fortune favoured those odds. 

_“…And in recent news a murder has been reported near the bustling nightlife district of Owl Street, early reports indicating that the murder took place at ‘U Rent’s Storage Facility on James Street between the hours of one am to two thirty. Details are still sketchy but it is believed that the victim is an impala doe. The ZPD is yet to release a statement detailing the victim or if they have any leads but we’ll keep you up to date on any further developments. Now to Ricky with finance…”_

I noticed Victoria walk up behind me with the autopsy report in hand, passing it to me and looking up at the television. "They were reporting it weren’t they?”

“Yeah, they moved on from it quickly though.” I say as I begin to flip through the dossier.

“Don’t breath a sigh of relief yet Henry. Just wait till the daytime channels get a hold of it. They’ll try to martyr us when we have to give the press release.”

“Well then we better get back to the station, report on what we’ve got.” I continue flipping through the dossier, turning a page and looking it over. “This thing seems like it has just as many leads as it does dead ends.” I follow Victoria as she begins walking out of the waiting room, catching up with her and walking by her side out of the doors and down the morgue’s steps. “How do you think mammals are going to react when they start running this on the six o’clock news?”

Victoria sighs, getting out the keys from her pocket “This city is still licking its wounds Henry, it never just ‘moved-on’ from what Bellwether did. The fear is still there...it just lies right below the surface. This…is probably going to bring it all to a fucking head. Nice little prey girl gets raped and mauled by a big scary pred? Those fifteen minutes of fame is all that the zealots will need. This city…it’s something beautiful Henry, no doubt about it. But it’s so fragile and it’s only one bad day away from tearing itself apart.” We each get into the car, Victoria starting the engine and pulling out of the car park onto the road, heading back towards the station. 

“The first thing we should do is try and back step the doe’s night. Find out what she was doing, if she was out with any friends or family.”

“She could have been out clubbing near Owl. Whoever targeted her slipped a roofie in her drink at the bar while she wasn’t looking. Got her a bit tipsy, took her out to Sahara” She takes a breath “Rapes her and dumps the body.” 

“It’s a textbook crime isn’t it?” 

“Yes, yes it is.” 

“Still…why dump the body somewhere like a storage lot? It would’ve been found sooner or later. If you wanted to dump a body, you’d dump it…well, in a dumpster. They left her in a storage lot poorly enough to be found by the guard. I’ve got a feeling that they sort of wanted her to be found.”  
“Why would they want her to be found?”

“Well I think that stems from the animalistic desires of this thing. They murdered this doe because of desire; they picked her out, hunted her down and killed her. Maybe they subconsciously like the idea of being on the other end of the spectrum; the hunter becomes the hunted so to speak. This isn’t a mammal who operates and thinks normally, so they wouldn’t react normally to something like this.” 

“Yeah…honestly I don’t know what to think of whoever did this. But what we need to do is start asking questions in the right places to the right mammals. We’ll head back to the station and get some names. Someone must know what happened to her.” I nodded, looking out my side window as we drove on through the traffic. As we passed the buildings I looked over to the sidewalk, noticing a wildebeest and jaguar who were walking arm in arm, adoring the city sights. I felt uneasy as I noticed how they got a few stares from passing mammals, as if it was foreshadowing to something coming. 

I felt as if the two of us had become tangled in the web, and we were blind to the spider.


	5. Home is Just Another Word for You

_**Then…** _

Something about the bar’s atmosphere felt artificial to me. As I sat alone at my table in front of the stage, dimly lit by the soft red glow of the glass candleholder in the middle of the tabletop, the candle’s neck slowly melting, it’s wick sinking further into a pool of wax as the minutes crawled past. As time inched on, its light became less commanding and further engulfed by the smoke laced atmosphere of the bar that was wafted around the room by ceiling fans hanging overhead.

Up on stage was a jazz ensemble band; a collection of mammals wielding instruments of brass that reflected in the stage lights like chunks of gold found deep within the bowels of a mine. I swirl the bourbon in my cup as the saxophonist, a hare whose instrument seemed too large for her body, brought her solo and the song to an epic finish, the bar erupting into a drunken volley of clapping, cheering and the occasional howl coming over from the wolf pack sitting in one of the booths against the wall.

I kept my eyes on them as I drank some more of my bourbon, sliding a block of ice onto my molars, crushing it, and swallowing it with the spirit.

As I reclined in my chair and the band packed their instruments into leather and vinyl cases, I looked around at the laughing diners and waitresses walking around with platters full of food and drink. The bar was built all the way back during the roaring twenties, and it held an atmosphere detached from the industrial feel of progress that was synonymous with the city, instead forgotten by time and stuck in the frame of mind of its creators; happy, carefree and ignorant.

The bar itself was a rare example of the city detached from the problems of crime, corruption and poverty. The feelings that were mixed into the atmosphere of the bar was done so by both the intoxication of it's patrons and their willingness to disconnect from their struggles and the problems of the city that lay beyond the bar’s doors. Some would carry their feelings of happiness to their homes and seemingly forget as to why they were spending most weeknights at the bar in the first place.

Others like me, however, would not hold onto the spirits of the bar despite our iron grips, and they would trickle through our digits like sand. Soon long after the moon has sunken into the abyss of the horizon we would return to the mundane life of dealing with the gritty nature of the city.

Until then, I was contempt with spending the rest of my time drinking my wallet dry and absorbing myself in the festive atmosphere of the night. I looked over to the bar, where the bartender distributed beer by the tap to the mammals who lay slumped over the counter atop swivelling barstools, only sufficiently coherent to fade out of unconsciousness long enough to order another round of drinks before falling back into their blackout, or to be more accurate fall back onto the counter top. My eyes moved from the counter to the wall above, beautiful oak wood stained and adorned with gold lining, numerous pictures showing the bar during it’s infancy and a large clock, the mechanical ticking of it’s hands seeming to cut through all the other sounds.

The clock on the wall stated that it was a quarter to ten, while my watch said it was ten past; either way it was late and any hopes that I would share the table with another had been dashed into the void of the night long ago. I reached for my wallet, returning it to my pants after pulling out a white card. The dim light, or lack thereof, made it impossible to make out what was on the card, and I had to hold it close to the candle so I could read the blue wording against the white background. ‘Gemini Dating Services: When The Search for love needs some Guidance’.

It wasn’t my idea to go out and try this dating thing but Joey, a Kangaroo who I trained with at the academy and had become a good friend of mine, insisted that I go out and at least try. I remember some time ago while we were walking around the precinct he brought the idea up, “Going out there is good for you Henry.” he insisted, using his natural talent for persuasion. The mammal could have just as easily made it in advertising as he did on the force.

He would tell me how this city and work could creep under the skin of even the most hardened mammal, and that dating was healthy for me, that I’d eventually drive myself mad if I did otherwise. After practically bending my arm behind my back he convinced me to sign up with Gemini, assuring that they were the best in the business, and that if anyone could find me love, it would be them.

So I went off on a few dates, a slither of optimism lying underneath my fears and presumptions. None got anywhere. All ended with my date saying her goodbyes, another night at home alone with the temptation to head down to whatever bar was open and a dissatisfying meal lingering in my stomach.

The dates never seemed to go anywhere; each one was with a different mammal but appeared to follow the same routine. Honestly, I found it much more enjoyable to just sit here, listen to the music and bask in the atmosphere of the bar, no matter how out of place it may be in this city. As the last members of the band cleared from the stage, a porcupine emerged from its right wing. He was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt and a small golden chain around his neck. He was carrying with him a microphone, its cord dragging behind him like a long tail.

“That was the Bluebooks, give them another round of applause ladies and gentlemammals.” The bar erupting once again into a choir of clapping and whistling, and I found myself smiling at their enthusiasm.

As the crowd’s ovation settled down, the porcupine continued talking. “Well folks we’ve had a great line up of mammals here tonight haven’t we? And the night isn’t over yet my friends. Our next performer comes all the way from New Stork, so make him feel welcome and give a round of applause for the one and only, Bray Charles!” As thunderous applause filled the bar once again, a mule walked onto the stage from its left side, wearing a pair of thick black glasses with lenses too dark to see through and a grey tuxedo, well worn and complemented with a golden tie. He leaned down and extended his hoof to the porcupine who grasped it in a pawshake, and then passed over the microphone and adjusted a stand to the mule’s height.

Placing the microphone onto the stand, Bray than grabbed it by its neck and carried it around in one hoof as other band members began to line up behind stands of their own, each carrying an instrument and wearing the same tuxedo and black glasses as Bray, who brought attention to himself as he spoke into the microphone. “How are we all doing tonight? Are we doing good?” His words rolled off his tongue heavily laced with both charisma and a southeastern accent of the Catlanta kind. The bar rose once again into a cheer and Bray flashed a wide grin, revealing white teeth that seemed polished enough to reflect the stage lights.

“That’s good.” He continued “It’s good to hear yall havn’ a good time. It’s too bad I, and the boys here with me on this, a-very special evening can’t see your smiles. Seen’ ain’t our strong suit?” He outlandishly said, pausing a second and regaining his composure amongst the quiet laughter of the crowd.

“But folks, tonight none of us are here to see! We are all here tonight, to have a-good old time and listen to some beautiful music. How about it boys?” Altogether the band played a few short, sharp and bobby notes to hint at what was to come. As the excitement in the air grew, I mused at how well Bray could work a crowd. “And one more thing ladies and gentlemammals, manager told me that we have a few of the boys in blue here tonight.” While he roused a few cheers, one could certainly make out a few drunken boos. “So to all you brave boys out there protectn’ dem city streets, this ones for you.” If it wasn’t obvious already, Bray solidified the fact that he was from out of town.

You’d never catch anyone in Maw openly thanking the police.

But none of that mattered as Bray began to sing his heart out and his band played to the heavens. He started with a classic that won over the crowd instantly, ‘It Should’ve Been Me’, a story of a mammal who was searching for love and consistently had his chances swindled by the paws of fate, and I found myself bobbing my head enthusiastically to the beat of the brass and drums as the bourbon begun to take affect.

And like the sinking candle wick, Bray’s words sunk into and became one with the atmosphere of the bar, swirling around the blades of the ceiling fans.

 _“As I passed by_  
A real fine Gazelle  
Had a nice dress on  
She sure looked swell  
I gave the eye  
And started to carry on  
But a Cadillac cruised up and swish!  
She was gone!

As he concluded the first verse, I thought back to one of my first call outs working the beat, about three and a half weeks into the job. Drive by shooting. 1969 Sedan parked at a red light carrying one of the city’s most notorious kingpin’s. Larry ‘Big Bear’ Maroni. He was on his last legs, but determined to make the whole world know his name. Too bad old grim decided to pay them an early visit, and spray their car with an AK.

 _It should have been me!_  
_With that real prey chick!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_With that real prey chick!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_Driving that, Cadillac!_

I throw back the bourbon.

 _A little later on_  
_A theatre I passed_  
_I spotted another doe_  
_My heart bet fast_  
_I was on set_  
_To right her name in my book_  
_But her husband showed up and_  
_Gave me a real dirty look_

With the passing of the second verse, I thought back to another call out, about two years into the job. Domestic. Disagreement between a father, mother and their son who high as a kite on PCP. When I got there the father, son and I stared each other down in a three -way Coltican standoff. Went on for an eternity. Measured in minutes. Ended like an old western, with the boy giving his father a memorable farewell before punching his own ticket.

 _It should have been me!_  
_With that real prey chick!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_With that real prey chick!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_Prowling town, with that doe!_

I throw back the bourbon.

 _I walked to the corner_  
_And saw a real sharp cat_  
_With a 300 dollar suit on_  
_And a hundred dollar hat_  
_He was standing by the sidewalk_  
_With a dime to blow_  
_When a sharp lady walked up and said_  
_‘Come on daddy let’s go’_

The third verse rolls on by, as does an old memory. Working parking duty in one of the nicer areas of the city. About every second car that I did a ticket on was a pimp’s. Three major distinctions. One: they always park in the disabled spots. Two: at least one bullet hole and two blown out lights. Three: there’s always a shotgun in the glove compartment. Don’t care much to tell how I know that.

 _It should have been me!_  
_With that real prey chick!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_With that real prey chick!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_Spending that, dime to blow!_

I throw back the bourbon.

 _I ate a bowl of chilli_  
_And I felt OK_  
_At least until I passed_  
_A fine café_  
_I saw a Stoat eating_  
_A great fish steak_  
_While a waitress stood by feeding him_  
_Ice cream and cake_

The fourth verse brings back a memory four weeks old. On one of my days off. In the park enjoying the sanctity along with the morning paper. Read about how someone had come forward with major evidence against the mayor amidst some corruption investigation. A week later. Same park. Same bench. Same paper. Same mammal had committed suicide in his apartment above a diner. Double-tap to the back of the head. Happens surprisingly often.

 _It should have been me!_  
_With that real prey chick!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_With that real prey chick!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_Eating Ice cream and cake!_

I throw back the bourbon.

 _It should have been me!_  
_Getting Zootopian kicks!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_Getting Zootopian kicks!_  
_It should have been me!_  
_Loving those, crazy chicks!_

At my last swig, my bourbon is gone along with my thoughts. Tonight, I was going to allow myself to enjoy the music. As the band begun their next song a waitress came up to me. “Care for another drink sir?”

I looked up to her, and for a split second, I found myself completely caught off guard. She was a Puma girl, wearing jeans and a blue shirt atop a black velvet undergarment that extended a little beyond her shirt’s arms, over her chest and surely stuck to her devilishly curvy frame like flypaper. I found myself wandering a little, but inevitably I was drawn to her most stunning feature.

Her eyes.

They were a beautiful chocolate brown that contrasted the sandy yellow of her fur. They looked so large and deep, that they’d swallowed all the stars and darkness of night, and by gazing into them, I was wandering the epic cosmos. I felt like the split second that I had been lost with her was an eternity. “Yes please, thank you very much.” I softly spoke as she reached over and grabbed my glass.

“Won’t be a moment sir.” She enthusiastically said with a big smile, turning around and heading back towards the bar, leaving me to my spinning head. I found myself flustered with feelings that were nothing more than a concept my mind could barely grasp. I definitely felt attraction for her -how my eyes looked over every inch of her body made sure of that, but getting all googly over a pretty girl wasn’t something for me to stumble over -to stumble over attraction at all seemed strange. Is it something else? Yes, is must be. I felt as if as if I could spend the rest of my life with her, even though thus far we’d spent less than a minute of it together.

Funny how love works like that.

As the band continued playing, my mind raced trying to think of something to say. In my head I ran through many scenarios, what and what not to say, how to say it, but my thoughts came crashing down as I saw her approach from the bar. She soon returned with my bourbon and placed it on my table. “Here you go sir.”

“Thank you.” I said. She turned to leave, but I quickly spoke up. “Hey, I don’t mean to be rude or anything but…I was just wondering what was your name?”

“My name?”

“Yes, because, if you don’t mind me saying, you look absolutely amazing. And I would love to, maybe, take you out for coffee sometime if it doesn’t seem too rude.” Subconsciously I held my breath, feeling as if I’d put my foot in my mouth.

She gives me a smile and my anxiety is put to rest. “You’re new to the dating game aren’t you?”

I laugh; obviously my previous dates hadn’t prepared me for when I’d be put in the spotlight. “No ma’am, I’m not much of a newcomer, but I haven’t exactly had the best of luck.”

“Well, it’s nothing to get all nervous about. And if you ask me, I think your charm has gotten you a bit of luck tonight.”

“Is that so?”

“Why it is. You know I actually wouldn’t mind going out for lunch sometime.” She looks over to the bar, holding the tray underneath her arm against her body. “It’d be nice to get away from work for awhile.”

“No problem. Um, I guess whenever you were available would be fine.” I smile, “Sorry if I seem a bit, you know, forward or anything.”

She looks back to me. “Relax man, you aren’t being forward or anything like that. Some guys in here are hardly as chivalrous as you are now. I’m off Saturday at around twelve. Maybe we meet here and…I don’t know, head downtown. We might go to a coffee shop there and let whatever happens, happens.” Her smile both calms and reassures me that, so far, I haven’t made any grievous mistakes.

“That sounds nice, my name’s Henry by the way.” I held out my paw to her, meeting her vacant paw in a pawshake.

“My name’s Caelnia.”

“That’s a beautiful name.” I said to her.

She blushes, bashfully adjusting her fur and momentarily hiding a shy smile behind her paw. “Thank you. My mother chose it for me, means queen or something in some ancient language.”

“Well, if you’ll let me say, you are a very beautiful queen.”

Her blush reddened “You’re very sweet.”

“I try.” I say with a smile. From the far side of the bar, a voice calls out “Caelina!” She tells me it’s a friend of hers and with her shift now finished, she needed to get heading home. I thank her for giving me the time of day and for the drink. She gives me a smile, tells me that she looks forward to our date, and off she goes, sharing hushed words with her friend as they leave, her walk carrying buoyancy to it.

I grabbed the glass and looked towards Bray, who had since moved onto another classic. ‘I’ve Got A Woman’. I smiled at the coincidence, and as Bray continued to sing I rose my glass to him. He seemed to look at me and give a smile, despite the fact that he’s totally blind.

 _“I got a Woman_  
_Way over town_  
_Whose Good to me!”_

**_Now…_ **

After some more time driving we arrived back at the precinct, Victoria turning off the road into the station’s above ground carpark and then down the ramp below. She idled into vacant number thirteen, and soon the catacombs of concrete and steel fell silent as the car’s engine was put to rest. As we exited the car, the opening and closing of the car doors breaking the silence over the quiet ambience of the city above, I noticed the concrete below my feet slightly damp. “Has it rained while we’ve been out?” I ask as Victoria and I stand beside the car.

“Maybe, we were on the far side of downtown after all. Sometimes those weather walls go on the frits and you wind up with storm at one end of a district and a sunny day at the other. Wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for there to have been a little sun shower while we were out.” As we begin to walk away from the car she presses a button on the car key to lock it, its indicators flashing a few times with the sound of its doors bolting shut.

“I’m thinking we should go and talk with her parents, start with them and then move onto other mammals of interest.” I say, my voice echoing like we were in an uncharted cave. We walk out of the car park to the hallway, Victoria moving over to Nick’s security window, lightly rapping on the mesh a few times.

“Seems a good a place to start as anywhere.” She said, “We’ll pull up whatever we can from the system. I’ll ring up her folks in advance, let them know we’re coming.”

“Is that normal procedure?”

“No, but it’s a courtesy thing if any. Last thing a pair of grieving parents want is a bunch of cops showing up unannounced and prodding sensitive areas with questions.”

“I guess so.” Nick walks up to the window and up some steps to the counter, a box of spark plugs and masking tape in one paw with a pencil in the other. “Here’s the key Nick.”

Nick puts his pencil behind his ear as Victoria hands the key through the mesh, grabbing it in his paw. “Thanks guys, appreciate your punctuality.”

“No problem, see you around.” Victoria says.

“Cheers, have a good one guys.” We wave him off and say our goodbyes as we made our way down the cream hall to the elevator. I pressed on one of its buttons as Victoria came up along side me. With a ‘ding’, the doors slid open, and Victoria and I are sent up on our way to the squad room.

As I enter through its swinging doors, Victoria following closely behind, I notice how the room carried a feeling of electricity. Not volatile or erratic, but exciting, pulsating and alive. As we made our way over to our stations, I noticed a few of the detectives huddled around a pair of desks on the opposite end of the room. While the rhinos created a wall of hide that made it impossible to see whose it was, judging from the angle most of the mammals were looking down on, I presumed it was a desk that had been built for a mammal no taller than four feet, give or take a few inches.

“What’s the commotion?” I asked Victoria, who looked at me and then over to the mammals.

“Oh that? It’s just the wonder-duo, Nick and Judy.”

“Huh.” I looked back over to the desks, through the wall of mammals, and I could just make out a red fox and bunny rabbit talking with the other officers. The fox had a cup of coffee and was wearing aviator shades with his badge slung around his neck, his body language conveying the message of blissful indifference. The rabbit had her badge strapped onto her belt and was talking ecstatically, practically jumping around with directionless enthusiasm. “Why are they called the wonder-duo?” I ask Victoria as we each sit down at our desks, Victoria booting up her computer while I looked through the doe’s autopsy report once again.

“Well…” Victoria says as she leans back, looking over to Nick and Judy, “It’s not like they’re Shearlock Holmes and Watson, but that’s not to say they’re not good at what they do. There are certainly cops who are worse, but there are ones who are better.”

“Where do we fall in that category Vic?” I ask her with a smile as I turn to a page containing the doe’s details; her date of birth, residence, job and such.

She returns my smile with a brazen grin, “Well my dear Gorden,” I laughed at her play on Shearlock’s famous line “I like to think that we’re up there. The thing with these two though, is that the media laps them up.”

“How so?”

“You see any other fox or rabbit while you’ve been here Gorden?”

“Well there’s Nick over there and…Nick.”

“Yeah, aren’t exactly a lot of rabbits and foxes lining up at the recruitment office here, but those two were the first. Gave the MII a huge boost in popularity, allowed the mayor to be all like, ‘Hey check it out, my thing worked!’”  
“MII?”

“Mammal-Inclusion Initiative. It’s this affirmative action program from a few years back. Good intentions and all, but it had been going on for a few years before those two came along, and to be honest with you Henry, it didn’t really yield much. Regardless though, they’re both good cops; managed to crack the savage mammal conspiracy wide open with nothing more than their wits about them.” She begans typing on her computer, getting up the citizen registry. “Quite the underdog story.”

“Inspiring,” I say as I look over to the pair, and notice how closely the fox and rabbit stood together. How he had his paw wrapped around her and how she leaned into him. It wouldn’t be too hard for someone to get the wrong idea and mammal resources to throw the whole department into hot water. But surely everyone knows colleague-lover relations are such a minefield that there practically taboo, right? “You got the CR?” I ask Victoria as I look back to her.

“Hang on it’s loading…ok there we go.”

“Alright, so her name is Abigail Duncan, twenty four years old, born sixth of November 1998.”

“Got it.” Victoria types Abigail’s information into the keyboard, clicking with the mouse as the registry came up with her details. “Yep…says here she attended Monash University, majored in electrical engineering and minored in art animation.” She clicked around a little more, “Weird combination,” she said to herself.

“What about her family? Does she have a place of work?”

“No work listed…it’s got her mum and dad’s place here, I’ll pull up their details in a second.”

“She could have done volunteering couldn’t she? That wouldn’t be on her CR would it?”

“Well I doubt if she only did stuff like bake sales, but say if it was at a charity event, I’m sure someone would have some record. I’ll print this all out so you can read it over on the way to her folks.” She types on the keyboard and clicks the mouse key. “There we go, should be coming out the printer any second. You mind getting that while I make the call to her parents?”

“No problem Vic.” I say as I get up from my chair, Victoria reaching over for the phone receiver on the far side of her desk. On the other side of the room was another door labelled ‘PRINTING ROOM’, slightly open ajar. Inside a few printers, copiers and fax machines were visible.

I pass Nick and Judy’s desk on my way over, the two seated and buried in their work, or to be more accurate Judy is buried in her work, she’s got a large file out that easily as thick as her waist while Nick’s busy on the computer, typing away and taking down notes. The two exchanged intermediate chatter that I didn’t care to listen to; seemed like something personal.

The printers all appeared to be large industrial things coloured white, and ranked in various sizes, each seeming like a smaller duplicate of the previous. I walked over to a printer spitting out Abigail and her parent’s details in a mechanical rhythm. After a few seconds it began to make a beeping noise informing me that it had completed its task, and demanded that it be relived of the pile of paper that now stood on its tray.

Grasping the paper with both paws, I turned to leave the room, but I quickly noticed a photocopying machine, coloured stark black. Thinking for a few seconds, I decided to make duplicates of all the files, just something to take home and maybe look over in my spare time. At the press of a green button, the photocopier screeched to life, shaking as it warmed itself up in the most unpleasant and spiteful manner possible. It was an elderly machine on its last legs, and it seemed to be making a show out of punishing me for awakening it from its slumber. After another five minutes I was out of the printing room with two copies, the photocopier returning to its sleep.

I returned to my desk, Victoria not noticing me approach, busy sorting out something in her draws. I put my personal copy in my top drawer, underneath a few sticky notes, paperclips and other office appliances. Closing the drawer, I looked up at Victoria, who had now finished sorting out whatever she was dealing with before. “Hey, you got the print out?”

“Yeah, right here” I say as I pass it over to her. She takes it in her paws and begins to flip through. “Think we better be going?”

“Yeah, I’ll drive while you read this over.”

“No problem.” I say as she turns off her computer, checking her badge and gun as I do the same, and sets off while I follow. Within five minutes, we were back out on the road, heading out to begin asking very difficult questions.

The doe’s parents lived out at Pyramid Plaza, a ritzy suburb in Sahara Square not too far from the Canopy Casino. Its residents enjoyed the higher commodities of life that comes complementary with vast wealth, which they seemed to have secured tighter than Fort Ox. You wouldn’t find a pred living out here for a good six miles, and it seemed that its residents took good care to maintain that.

I remember reading in an article that the suburb had the highest concentration of millionaires anywhere on the western coast. The same article also told of how Maw used to have the highest concentration of billionaires during its glory days. It probably still does, although the money is less than clean now, as with most things to do with that city.

As I sat in the passenger seat of our unmarked while Victoria drove along the highway that cut across downtown directly into the sandy desert and arid dunes of Sahara Square, I continued to read over the doe’s autopsy report and file, trying to pick out something that could give us any leads.

We had the windows rolled down to allow cool air to filter in and relieve the car of the sticky humidity that had compounded in the cabin ever since we’d crossed the weather wall. I had my tie and collar loose, the wind blowing over my fur and skin like the landscape below while Victoria had one of her arms resting nonchalantly on the window seal with the other on the wheel, gently turning it left and right with the curvature of the highway. “That Judy girl seemed nice.” I said as I continued reading, Victoria indicating and taking a turnoff down from the freeway above onto a main road that swerved around the lush streets.

“Yeah she’s a great friend. And a pretty decent cop. She’s still got optimism for the job which in itself is something to be commended. No wonder the MII and that bitch Bellwether wanted to make her the poster child of the whole ZPD.”

“Its weird to hear everyone make a big deal over a bunny cop.”

“She was the first one in the city, remember?”

“Yeah but, not like the first rabbit cop ever, right?” We round a corner; a group of camels are busy playing a game of cards out on their front porch, but they all seem to glare at us as we past, but only for a few seconds, before returning to their game. Further on down the road, a pair of goat parents are walking with their kids, the younger ones being carried along in baby bags strapped to their mother’s backs. While the children and mother’s give no mind, I notice the father look at us, not the car, but directly at us. I decide to do up my tie and raise my window as Victoria grabs my attention.

“Well…they certainly were rare weren’t they? The way the news trumpeted about it seemed to imply so. A few of the other guys at the precinct figured that there were less than a thousand rabbits in the police force nationally.” Victoria said as we motored down the road.

“No way Vic. Back at Maw, I knew at least fifty rabbits in the force. I mean sure, hardly any worked on the beat or did something like narco or homicide, most were actually with SWAT or SOHI, but they were there. About three hundred rabbits were with MPD alone I think.”

Victoria had a look of disbelief on her face “What the hell is SOHI? And honestly I could never, ever, see a bunny rabbit all kitted out in SWAT gear.” We came to a red light, the lack of air causing Victoria to raise her own window and put on the air conditioning.

“Ugh…I think it stood for something like…Special Operations…Hostile, no wait a minute.” I take a few seconds to think back, the meaning behind the acronym seeming to allude me before a spark in the back of my brain went off. “Oh yeah that’s right. It’s for Special Operations Hostage Interception. It was this task force the last mayor before I left started, consisted almost entirely of rabbits and hares. They’d use them during hostage situations or operations, scout out areas undetected and climb through vents and still be large enough to carry a decent firearm.” As I think back I laugh a little. “You know what the drug runners called ‘em?”

“What?”

“Jumping shadows. Hell, I remember a bunch of times calling them in before SWAT because they were so much better at the same job. Got me in hot water heaps though.”

“Why?”

“SWAT is less expensive.”

After about ten more minutes of Victoria driving as much as swerving to avoid children playing in the idle streets underneath sprinklers spraying water onto lush green and boiling tarmac we had entered Pyramid Plaza, and we closing in on the Duncan's home. While I flipped through the pile of papers, a thought continuously bounced around in my head. ‘Crystal and pastor…crystal and pastor’ It was a familiar combination, something that I’d gotten to know all too well during my time working narcotics. The two could be used as a base for a number of other super-drugs, mixed with other substances from opium to battery acid to coco-powder, whatever the drug runners could make to give their consumers a little extra high.

I remember a drug bust on what Intel stated was a Collarmbian meth house. Turned out it was being used to make baby oil, a lethal combination of pastor, crystal meth, vodka and baby powder. It’d be mixed in a big bin, most low-income drug dealers would use a paddle or a flipper, but those who could afford it would use electric handheld mixers, beating the ingredients like a devilish cake mix until it was runny like syrup. Then it would be collected, purified and sold in syringes to every slum, dead end and brothel the dealer could get their paws on. The stuff would go for about five hundred a litre and sometimes even more if you could find someone really desperate. There’s one thing I remember about the drug business.

It’s really big money with really big mammals.

Soon we pulled up at the Duncan’s home, an immaculate double story house with walls that stood strong and mighty. It was painted a bright white as if it was made out of moonstone, and I could only imagine how much of a pain it was to clean when sandstorms blew in. The front yard was lavish with vegetation from the tallest fern to the smallest and most delicate rose; it seemed like something better fit to the Rainforest District. Along the path from the sidewalk to the porch were sprinklers flanking us either side, spraying away at the foliage and making it slick and shiny in the beaming sun.  
Victoria pressed the doorbell and rapped on its wooden frame a few times. “Missus Duncan? It’s Victoria and Henry from the ZPD, we talked on the phone earlier?” The house remained silent, the only sound coming from the ambiance of clicking sprinklers, childish laughter and the humid air that ruffled our fur and made us sweat underneath our clothes.

After a few more seconds in the sweltering heat, the wooden doors finally creaked open; their hinges screaming for a well deserved oiling that would never come. Behind the door was an old doe, an impala who looked about fifty years old and was wearing a red shirt, a white long-skirt with a blue rose and leaf pattern at the bottom and a navy blue coatigan adorned with a golden broach. She looked like a womammal of prestige with a sense of elegance from a time long lost; her lipstick and eyeliner told that she wanted to hold onto some sense of beauty that had been found in plenty during her youth.

“Missus Duncan, its nice to meet you.” I held out my paw, and she cautiously grasped it with her hoof, shaking it before quickly withdrawing to the safety of her coatigan. “I’m Detective Gorden and this is Detective Kloar, I believe she contacted you and your husband on the phone earlier. We were hoping you would spare us some of your time to ask some questions about Abigail.”

Her face falters for a second, and I could see behind the façade of make up, fancy clothes and elegant stature, was a womammal who was distraught, in grief and most prominently afraid. “Oh, yes…please come right in, my husband is just sitting in the living room.” She opened the door up for us, and as soon as we entered the house we were flushed with a gust of cool air and tiles that calmed our feet sore from the heat.

We made our way to the living room up on the second floor next to a balcony at the back of the house that overlooked Savannah Central and Polar Strait to the east; a million dollar view in a billion dollar house. A buck was sitting in a large chair besides the window, observing the sandy dunes and sparkling blue sea. He was wrinkled and old like his beloved wife, who took a seat in the chair next to him while Victoria and I sat on a couch across from both of them.

Unlike his wife, he made no attempt to hide the signs of his age - the mattered fur, wrinkled skin and dull eyes. He seemed to wear them like a badge of pride, ‘I’m still here’ he told the world without muttering a word.

An uneasy silence fell over the room, the whole house, if not the whole district. For once, I was the one who broke it. “Mister and Missus Duncan, Victoria and I are hoping that you will be able to answer some questions about Abigail.” I pause for a second, allowing the Duncan’s to regain their composure, although the Buck’s face didn’t seem to waiver much.

His wife was a different story.

“About what detective? We already talked to police, we told them everything!” Her face waivered again, her mask of makeup and class seeming to instantaneously shatter before reassembling.

“We’re just going to be asking just some questions about where you knew she was the time leading up to and at the time of her death just to get a better idea OF WHAT HAPPENED than what was in your statement.” I told her, my voice sharp and to the point, like steel.

Victoria spoke up after me, her's sympathetic and with a tone of concern, “We understand that this is a difficult time you two are going through, and I honestly wish that we weren’t meeting each other under these circumstances, but we need you both to remain calm and composed so we can find out as much as we can and quickly apprehend the killer.”

The doe calmed down, wiping a stray tear with her hoof and taking in deep breaths to calm her heart. “Okay…” She said, solemnly,

“Thank you.” Victoria and I said as I got out a pen and pad, Victoria already having hers out, each of us ready to write down even the most miniscule of details. We sat there for the better part of a hour, although the time seemed to drag on for days. Victoria and I alternated in asking questions, squeezing ever piece of information out of those old folks like a freshly cut lemon.

It isn’t necessary to remember every little detail for this part; I just remember a few important snippets.

Like pictures from a photo album.

Ain’t your whole life there between the pages.

But just enough to tell a story.

“Now, it says in your statement the last time you saw Abigail was five days ago, four days before the murder, can you tell us where this was and what you were doing?”

“She was here with us, detectives. She’d popped in for a little bit of afternoon tea, to see how we were going while she was busy with her studies. She told us how she was planning to go out with friends the…night she died.”

“Do you remember if she said where she was going out?”

The doe contemplated the question for a few seconds, seeming to scrape her brain for an answer, but my hope for one dwindled as the seconds went on. “I’m…sorry detectives I can’t at all remember. What about you John? Do you remember where she said she was going?”

“Owl” The buck said, his voice raspy and quiet “She said something about Owl Street I think. But, I don’t believe she said they were going out there for the whole night. I think she said something about picking up a friend and heading out to Kingstonne, to one of those new bars or hotels there.”

“Do you remember what time she was out from?” Victoria asked

“Well she doesn’t own a car you see -takes the train to get from home to school or wherever she needs to go.” The doe says. As she continues I felt my mind deadpan from dread. Anyone could have seen here on the public train, anyone could have picked her out and anyone on that train could have killed her. “I think she was heading straight from home to Owl so…I guess whatever train would be leaving from near her place to Owl after six; they were going for a night out so I doubt they’d leave any earlier than that.” I made a note on my pad to check the transit registry, and see what train she may have taken from her home.

“Would she have taken a train to go from Owl to Kingstonne?” Victoria asked.

“No, I specifically remember her saying that she was riding with her friends in one of their cars.”

“Can you tell us who these friends were?” I asked again.

“I’m sorry detective, they were from her school and we never really got the opportunity to get to know them well.”

“It’s no problem, it’s something we can follow up later.” Victoria said as she jotted down a few notes on her pad. “Can you tell us if Abigail was in any past relationship that you knew of at the time or before her death?”

“No” The doe laughs a little, like a mother watching her young child succeed against impossible odds. I guess she kind of is, if only in memory. “That was one of the many things that made her so special. She was completely dedicated to her schooling, never took a day off or away from the books if she could avoid it. She definitely was going to make big changes.” Another tear, another wipe of the cheek. “My poor…sweet baby girl.” Another tear, another wipe of the cheek.

As she calmed I spoke up. “Ma’am do you know if Abigail was perhaps involved in any volunteer or part time work?” A look of confusion broke through the doe’s mask.

“Why do you need to know that?” She asked, confused “I can’t imagine how that would help with a murder.”

“Because ma’am,” I looked directly at her wet eyes that held back many tears like a flood gate. “We believe this may have been a random attack. We’re finding out about any public exposer she may have had that could have opened her up to be targeted.”

“Oh yes how silly of me…” The doe trailed off

“No she wasn’t” The father spoke up “Always in her books that girl was, never got herself involved with the riffraff. Best daughter a father could ever ask for.”

“Do you believe that she may have known or been in contact with anyone with a motive for such an attack? Did she seem distressed as if someone was harassing her?” I asked with bated breath, as I felt this question in particular was truly walking through a minefield with iron heels.

“Not that we knew detectives…I do hope she wasn’t hiding anything serious like that from us.” Her voice carried a hint of despair to it. A few stray tears slid down her face, this time she made no effort to regain her composure. “I-I’m sorry detectives.” She began to weep a little, her husband grasping her hoof and gently rubbing his digits on hers.

“There’s no need to apologise ma’am. Grief is something that must be worked through over time; how you’re reacting completely normal.” She continues to cry, her weeping breaking the cool air of the house and the sound of a mother who has lost all that is precious to her is something that still chills me to my bones and keeps me awake at night. Her husband rose from his chair and embraced his wife during her breakdown in a warm hug; it’s radiating emotion rivalling the outside heat.

“It’s okay love, go get some rest.” He told her, wiping tears and dripping mascara away from her face. She nodded, seemingly too drained to talk, and made her way downstairs to their bedroom. John turned to us, his face looking equally drained and devoid of energy. “Detectives, is there anything else I can do? I must apologise for my wife…this whole thing has been, well…very hard for her to say the least.”

I quickly stood up and was followed by Victoria, the two of us shaking John’s hoof. “There is no need to apologise sir. This was probably not the best time to come around and prod you with questions.” I said as Victoria and I walked over to the staircase.

“Nonsense” He said to me as he tottered along side of us with a slight limp and arched back. “You’re just doing your jobs. It’s good you’re out here right away, makes me sleep easier at night knowing that they’ve got some competent detectives working on this. Come, I’ll see you out the door.” We followed him as the three of us walked down the steps one at a time.

“And my wife, she’s been taking this extra hard. Harder than anyone really.” He continued as we descended down the mahogany steps “It’s because, although we didn’t tell you just before, she and Abigail had gotten into a fight when she came over five days ago.”

“Over what?”

“Nothing detective, family troubles and nothing more.”

“Is it anything we should be worried about?” I ask him, my pressing that, be it family or not, we should know about all troubles.”

“No detective, it isn’t. Abigail said something, Diana said another, and it escalated into a fight. Honestly it would have blown over by the time Abigail closed the door, nothing more. But obviously she blames herself and, honestly you can’t fault her for that. The last conversation you had with your daughter before she was killed was a petty fight? What’s a mother to think of herself?” We make it down the stairs and walked over to the door “We all need closure, her especially.”

“We’ll do what we can sir, rest assured, Detective Gorden and I won’t rest until we’ve apprehended the suspect.” Victoria says to John, sharing a firm pawshake before looking at me. “I’ll get the car started up, be quick.”

“Alright.” I say to her as she makes her way off the porch to the car.

I feel John grab me on the shoulder and I quickly look to him. He’s looking at me like a father about to confine in his son, his grip feels like it too, not to constrict, but to show trust. “You seem like a good cop Gorden. Your partner too, both good cops.”

“Thank you John.”

“You owe me no thanks, but listen, if you and your partner get to that son of a bitch before anyone else, before you’ve called it in, if you have the chance, I need you to do me a favour.”

“Sir?”

“I want you to beat that piece of shit within an inch of his life, you hear? I want you to beat him so bad, that they’ll need to stick a dozen tubes through his mouth and a dozen more up his ass so every time he takes a pathetic breath he doesn’t collapse his stomach. You understand what I’m saying?” I’m looking him dead in the eye, no longer are they reflecting fatherly kindness at me but instead a look of determination and raw emotion. Raw revenge. He had moved his hoof off of my shoulder, and we stand facing each other, arms at our side.

A few seconds past between us over the dry air. We still have our arms to our side, but this time our bodies are rigid, our face firm, and our gazes unwavering. I ask him flatly, “Are you seriously asking me to kill a suspect?” each syllable loaded with resilience and authoirty, but also an undertone of reaffirmation.

“No detective. That scum doesn’t deserve death. He deserves to suffer for what he did to my baby girl.”

“I can’t do that for you.”

“Don’t do it for me Gorden. Do it for my wife and my fucking daughter.”

He goes to close the door as I step back out of the hallway onto the porch. “I’m sure you’ll make the right call.” He says, shutting the door in my face bringing an abrupt end to our standoff. It wasn’t long before the humidity once again slithered underneath my collar and I was back in the air-conditioned cabin of the car.

Victoria drove off back towards the station, away from the neighbourhood that felt now less associated with prestige and instead a sense of hostility. “I’m thinking we should call up the school, find out what classes she has and who were her friends.”

“Yeah.” I said flatly as I sat back in my chair and undid my tie. I wasn’t in the mood to talk about anything right now. With my response Victoria seemed to give up on talking also, leaving the cabin to the sound of the radio and ambiance of the outside world. We drove for about a minute until she spoke up again. “What were you talking about while I was starting the car up?”

“…The weather…we were talking about the weather.” For the remainder of our drive through Savannah neither of us said a word about the case.

Not a word.


	6. I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire

I’d finished my walk along Cockleshell Beach an hour after I’d gotten off the phone with Morris. Or was it two? Whenever I decided to leave the red sands of Sahara Square and make my way home, the sun had dove beneath the crashing waves of the horizon and bled its light across the sprawling expanse of the ocean.

What I do remember is that on my way home my phone was buzzing every ten seconds with a new message or missed call notification. A quarter of the texts were from Morris with further details about my arranged meeting with my informant --when, where and who I should look out for.

His texts told me that while yesterday my informant was unwilling to meet (something in the water according to Morris), they were much more eager to come out of their burro today. The remainder of texts and calls that clogged up my phone’s inbox were from in-and-out-of town contacts that either owed me a few favours or had vested interests in my business here in this magnificent, idiosyncratic city.

As I returned missed calls and texts, I took care to walk out of sight and to talk with hushed words. Despite his numerous faults, one thing I never underestimated Morris for was how many ears and eyes he had around this city. Its one thing he can make his father proud of.

Barely.

As such, it would be moronic for a mammal in my situation to not take the necessary precautions; you don’t need to take many to fool the bear. By the time I had concluded the business of responding to all of the texts and calls that I’d missed it was somewhere around ten, and it took another forty minutes by train to get to my hotel, not that far from Owl Street or the resting place of that pretty Impala.

Sure, I could have taken one of the evening trams and made it in twenty, but there’s hardly anyone riding them at this time in favour of the plush seats and heated cabins of the subway, and I’d like to indulge in sweet smells and flavours just for a little bit. It’s a little harmless guilty pleasure I admit. Can’t fault a mammal for that, can you?

I got off of at the bus stop on the far corner of my hotel’s street, a stone’s throw away from the beating music of Owl and on the intersection between Histula and Purnich; streets of Molish and Furman decent respectively. During the night-time you could easily feel the undertone of tension and anxiety associated with the intersecting rivers of asphalt, the majority of which seemed to come from the Molish side. To be quite honest, I found that it was the buildings that were more afraid of each other than the residents.

As I walked along the manicured streets underneath the halo of street lamps, I thought about the necessity of moving to another hotel. The proximity this one possessed to the mammals I needed to do business with had served me well thus far. Its close proximity to Owl, which as it always was at that time of night was thumping away with its loud techno music, had served me especially well also, if only for a single night. But, despite this, my proximity to where my spirit locked with another was now a liability, a danger, and a risk -nothing that I was willing to put my self at for long.

The hotel in question was sandwiched between a large apartment building to its left for taller mammals and a much smaller cottage to its right, adorned by a meticulously kept garden embellished  with many roses, orchids, weeping bells and other carnations whose petals were made slick by dew and sparkled in the moon light.

As I made my way up steps and along a winding path to the tiny lobby of the hotel, I could hear the distinct buzzing of bees attending to the flowers which, with no struggle, overcame the lumbering beat of the music far away. As I entered the lobby, my mind glimpsed the thought, like back at the beach, of growing ancient and grey, but this time attending a garden. God I was beginning to feel old.

I made my way past the counter, an old wooden thing made of mahogany and lit by a small lead-light lamp, its holder plated with gold and adorned by an emerald green lampshade with a pattern that told an old wives’ tale of beasts long dead. Behind the counter was an elderly meerkat; dull fur and frail paws, shaking wearily as she flipped through the guest registry, one of her favourite past times.

On occasion she would grab a pawful of nuts and dried berries from a small ceramic bowl next to her, quietly eating them as she flipped the pages. I remember hearing her mention that the bowl was Rodentianese, and had come from the Forbidden City itself. I imagined how for centuries it would be used at exquisite banquets to hold the meals of emperors and empresses, that at one point it was a symbol of vast wealth and power, yet found its journey winding up here; in a dingy but antiquated hotel, contrasting the kinglike halls that it once occupied. Now it was the food-thing of a quaint old wommammal.

I rounded the counter and began to ascend steps leading to my room above . I’d hastily made my way up the stairs to the hallway on the third floor. My room was at the very end, with about five others running parallel to each other down the corridor. As I made my way to my room, I made sure to step lightly on the mothball-smelling carpet of the hallway, trying to avoid the creaks of the moaning floorboards beneath. I took less care in shutting my door.

After my shower I found myself sitting on my rickety bed and starring out the window overlooking the city, still wearing my towel and dripping a little bit of water onto the worn carpet and my bed sheets. The whole city looked like a concrete jungle of blackness.

The neon lights of Owl appeared like a luminous river that cut straight through the thick canopy. The lights strewn indiscriminately across the unnatural landscape looked like ripe fruits dangling high above from the branches of towering trees. The sporadic horns and siren’s of the city’s traffic, echoing out from as far as its centre, were like the primal calls of animals from a time long past.

I don’t remember how long I sat there staring through the window, but by the time I leaned over to the drawer besides my bed much of my fur had dried, and there was a notable wet patch on the bed sheets. From the top drawer I grabbed a cigarette and lighter. The old meerkat enforced a strict no smoking policy, so as I set the cigarette alight I opened the window ajar, the trail of smoke wafting out into the night.

The city was much louder then, and it made it difficult to think. It wasn’t long before I dispatched of the cigarette by flicking it out the window and went to bed, paying no mind to the mostly-dry wet patch.

This morning I awoke to the droning sound of the alarm from the electronic clock sitting atop the nightstand. I was sprawled out on my back; my body in a cold sweat and my blanket all wrapped and twisted, forming many creases and fold over my body and bed like a hilly valley of plush snow. Whilst I laid on my back for an ever growing span of seconds, my senses still lingered within my slumber, and I found myself mute to the world. As I blinked my eyes to focus my vision and smacked my mouth to calm the parched sensation my senses returned, and I found my self slowly beginning to wake with the city.

Sitting up right, I slothfully reached over to the nightstand and switched off the clock’s alarm. Leaning against the wooden frame of my bedhead, I rubbed the remained of sleep out of my eyes and massaged my cheeks and snout with a single paw whilst cold chills swept all through my fur.

I’d forgotten to close the window yesterday, and through the night it had remained ajar, allowing for the cool change that routinely came with a Zootopian morning to send in a gust of crisp wind into my room.

I let out a yawn, stretched my limbs and digits and shut the window. I leaned against its frame, and looked out across the now lit jungle. Through the smeary glass one could hear the day beginning underneath clouds glazed daffodil yellow and wine red, swirling above the city as the sun inched ever closer to bursting over the horizon.

While most mammals were still asleep, a few went about preparing for a day of learning, commerce and socialisation. Some nocturnal mammals could be seen lingering home from early day day-shifts or from an evening out.

I stood against the window sill for a little while longer, just enough time for a smile to creep down from my mind and grow across my face.

Today was going to be a very good day indeed.

After my shower I quickly got myself dressed, trying to go with something inconspicuous; best to just blend into the crowd and keep out of the eyes of both friends and foes alike. I finally decided upon plain denim jeans, a hat donning an orange sporting team’s logo I’d picked up while I was making my way to the hotel and a shirt of the same colour.

I remembered during my train ride a few days ago I oversaw the sports column of the detective’s newspaper, and how it trumped on about a major football game being held out at the Savannah Central Super Stadium.

It was set near the time of my meeting, and the drove of mammals that would be swarming all over could provide easy cover to slip away if things went pear-shaped.

It was an awful shame that the detective left so hurriedly, or I would have been able to see who was the local team. But the hat was the cheapest one at the cheapest store, and for now, whatever logo that was flimsily stitched onto it didn’t matter to me.

After shutting and securely locking my door, I made my way down the hallway. My stride carried jauntiness to it, and I made no effort to hamper the groaning and creaking that came from the floorboards and bounced all the way down the hall, off of walls and underneath frail doors. I hastily made my way down the stairs and past the counter, the old meerkat still flipping through the registry without batting an eye as I walked out the lobby.

This morning the bus stop was crowded with many different species of mammals, all seeming to be wearing some sort of football related piece of clothing; from rhinos wearing bombastic shirts to muskrats wearing team-coloured scarfs. As I waited for the bus I even spotted a few mammals with face paint on their fur and hide. The whole thing had stirred up the jungle,  and sent its inhabitants into some crazed fever.

Soon a bus arrived and was quickly followed by several more, all lining up parallel to the bus stop and down along the footpath like a large segmented worm. As the busses began to fill with passengers, I waited, leaning my back against the bus stop and trying to pick out the buses with the least amount of passengers. Sure, blending in could make for an easy get away, but there wouldn’t be much point if I’m swamped away with the crowd and miss my meeting completely. According to the bus- stop’s timetable, the convoy had a stop right next to Little Rodentia and as the crowd waiting to get on thinned, I decided upon riding the first bus.

Initially, I figured it would be best get off at Rodentia and depart from the crowd as soon as possible, thus the first bus was the best option.

Now however, I was beginning to question why I didn’t just walk.

I pay my bus fare to the driver, a lemur who wore a pair of purple glasses and had various ropes and ribbons wrapped around his tail. “Alright ‘mon, one more for the party. Should be enough room for you to stand while we get down to our destination all right.” He says as he punches a few button and presents the ticket spat out by the machine.

I accept the ticket and make my way to a vacant seat that left me sandwiched between a towering pair of bison sharing a conversation with each other, paying no noticeable attention to my presence. I think it’s better that way, considering the two of them are talking about how much they hate a particular team, the same team whose logo was on my cap. As the bus continues on and the two get deeper into their conversation, I decide to rest the cap in my lap and keep the logo hidden.

Much to my frustration, as soon as I had sat down a heavily pregnant bore walked up before me, the bison’s attention unwavering and conversation continuing undisturbed. Begrudgingly, I feigned a smile and offered her my seat, which she graciously accepted and left me to hang onto one of the looped grips dangling off of the rails that run along the bus’ spine.

It seemed that there were easily another dozen mammals standing than there was sitting, and with every bus stop that number grew. Eventually as we neared Little Rodentia there were so many mammals that I couldn’t move my legs without risking pushing over a family of mice or bumping into a rhino.

I felt trapped like a bird in a cage. It wasn’t a feeling I was accustomed to. I was much more used to being outside the cage.

I eventually decide to get off at a bus stop near a large open plaza, about four to five blocks away from Little Rodentia. It wasn’t the closet place to get off, but I easily had enough time to make it over to Rodentia by foot. There were over two hundred mammals buzzing around the plaza, maybe even three. It felt like I’d walked into an oversized beehive that had been prodded with a stick one too many times.

Just like on the bus, mammals everywhere wore sporting jerseys, flamboyant clothes and costumes, and had their faces decorated with fur paint sporting contrasting team colours. As I made my way across the plaza in the direction of Rodentia, I noticed how their behaviour of these mammals varied from humble to patriotic to zealous to down right insane, the chants of team anthems rolling over the concrete planes like Mesolithic war cries.

It took me about thirty minutes to make my way out of the plaza and jog the five blocks to Rodentia. The footpaths along the way were choked with mammals, practically spilling over the gutter and into the rodent lane. Separating the final block of flats and the small plaza where the border gates of Little Rodentia stood guard was a road full of traffic, halted by a red light swinging overhead.

Weaving in-between the gridlocked catacomb of cars, busses and trucks earned me a few looks from frustrated and surprisingly vocal motorists. As I stepped up onto the curb, a mongoose wearing a stained singlet driving a tow truck called out to me “You know they’ve got lights to cross at for a reason buddy!”

I briefly turned to face him, “And I care why?” I yelled out before turning around and continue on my way towards Rodentia, uncaring of his irritated swearing as he slumped back into his seat, the traffic remaining unmoved. I couldn’t care less what the mongoose thought. He was of no importance to me today.

Encircling the tiny microcosm of Little Rodentia was a cast iron fence fortified by concrete towers that dwarfed even me, and made the presence of the little city known to mammals of all sizes. Standing before the main entrance, a small arched opening in the stonewall that ran along the base of the fence, I reached for the phone that I had in my back left pocket, and a small piece of paper that I had in my right.

The phone that I had on me wasn’t the one I used to call Morris or handle my more…personal affairs the day before. It was burner phone, easy to use, easy to dispose of but near impossible to track. I had about a dozen back in my hotel room underneath my bed.

They were a farewell present from home and a constant reminder to always be careful. It’s nice how it’s that way.

Family’s always looking out for you.

Hastily punching in my contact’s number, I waited anxiously as the phone’s dail up-tone echoed inside of my ear. For a very brief second, I felt as if I was being watched from all sides.

I looked all around at the flowing sea of mammals, with no one suspicious, or who looked as if they might have been spying on me, catching my eye. As the phone droned on I looked up to the apartment windows peering down on me as if I was a performer in some ancient gladiatorial arena.

My suspicions were struck down, but at the same time somewhat reaffirmed, as the dial up tone cut off and for a few short seconds I heard nothing but silence. As quickly as it had came however, the moment was lost to me.

Like a cool breeze trapped within a hurricane.

The Phone Line Picked Up.

“Yes?” Said a voice. It was near incomprehensible, like whoever was on the other end had their vocal cords all knotted and twisted. I quickly realised that they were using a scrambler, and I felt some comfort flow through me. A professional always knows how to make a good first impression.

“It’s me, your client.”

“You the foreigner?”

I felt a tick, surveyed my surroundings, and went back to watching the rodents go about their tiny day. “In a domestic sense, yes.”

“Are you outside of Little Rodentia?”

“I’m not an amateur. I wouldn’t be calling if I wasn’t.”

“Are you sure you weren’t followed?”

“Again, I’m not an amateur.”

“I’ll rephrase that for you --Are you sure you weren’t followed by your associate?”

The tick, the quick glance, and the feeling of confidence. “Morris knows that we are meeting, but he is totally unaware as to the specific details. He’s completely out of the loop.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I wouldn’t be meeting with anyone if I wasn’t sure of who was in and out of   the loop –especially considering the topic of our business.”

“…Payment?”

“I’ve got it arranged and ready. By the hour, you are going to be a very wealthy mammal.”

“Okay…I’m sending someone to meet you.”

“We’re going somewhere else?”

“My safe house. I don’t know enough about you. I know too much about Morris. Sit tight, I’m sending a trusted friend of mine to pick you up. She’ll get you here safe.”

“How should I identify myself?”

“Walk over to the trash can near the mail box. Tap on the top of the mailbox with your right paw three times. Then just wait. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Pleasure.”

I hung up the phone, placed it in my right back pocket and walked over to a trashcan besides a mailbox. The mailbox from a distance appeared in decent condition, but upon closer inspection, one could see the numerous dents left from the rough handling of the bin set aside it. After banging on its top three times, I leaned my back against the mailbox and awaited my escort.

As I counted the passing minutes and surveyed my surroundings, I noticed an apartment complex a few streets away with a large ‘FOR RENT’ on display. A smile grew across my face as I chuckled as the sheer insanity of the coincidence; a mammal looking to move sees a place offering a roof over his head.

I do hope the rent isn’t too high though.

Hope they accept cash too.

Suddenly, I felt a tapping sensation on my left foot and upon looking down I was surprised to see a rat looking up at me. She wore a ruby red singlet, a pair of torn jeans that were cut at her thigh and silky fur that was a rich and dark oaky-brown colour. What surprised me the most about her was her size -she was much larger than your common brown rat; easily bordering on stoat size.

‘Swamp Rat’ was the first thought to come to mind.

“You the client?”

“I don’t think I’d be banging the top of a mailbox if I wasn’t.” I say to her with a haughty smile, still looking down onto her from above.

“You never know in this town,” She pulled a stick of gum from her pocket, nonchalantly threw the rapper on the ground and stuck it in her mouth, looking around whilst chewing. “We certainly have a lot of crazies here."

She continues chewing "With what the bossmammal’s giving to you, I’ve got to wonder if you could be counted as one.” I felt my ears twitch a little as I let out a deep sigh. She then eyes me over, head to toe. “You ready to go?”

“Lead the way.” I bluntly said to her. She nodded and guided me through the crowd, taking me across the plaza to an old van, its green paint pealing from the sun and one of its hubcaps missing.

Behind the wheel was a female Cape’s Hunting dog with several piercing in each ear and a nose ring. Sitting next to her was a sun bear wearing a blue polo neck shirt, a pair of cargo shorts and a pair of thick glasses that looked older than the van.

“This is our ride.” The rat says as she opens up the back door for me. “Hey, Monica, let’s go, I’ve got our payday!”

“’Bout time,” She puts the keys into the ignition and brings the van to life, the motor making stentorian noises as our driver kicked it into gear and abruptly joined the flow of traffic.  

As we continued on through the city, Monica adjusted her rear vision mirror to look from the road to me, and I felt unnerved as a sly smile grew across her face. “Not bad payday either, quite the looker.”

As the trio chuckled amongst themselves, I grew a frown heavy with vexation.

“Ooo and little feisty --my type of male!”

“Easy Monica, you’re not in heat.” The sun bear says with a brazen grin. “Give the mammal some respect all right? He’s making all of us very, very rich. Isn’t that right Em?”

“’Very very rich’ is an understatement my friend.” The rat, or rather Emma, or whatever ‘Em’ is short for, says amidst the cabin’s dying laughter. “Let me tell you buddy” She says to me. “We’ve never dealt with anyone that our boss has been willing to meet in mammal.”

“With what I’m paying you, I’d consider it rude for your boss not to deliver face to face.” I say as I adjust my shirt.

“Got to wonder what we’re giving ya!” Monica says as she swerves around a car merging into our lane.

“Girl you do not want to know!” The Sun bear says as we round a corner, the van nearly flipping over.

We arrive at the safe house after twenty minutes of driving and unwanted banter. It stands as a small entrance wedged between two massive industrial sheds. The entrance is as high as a roller-door, and as I approach I notice how it looked as if it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast.

It had a plethora of locks and security cameras adorning it from above like modern gargoyles. They were like the beady little eyes of a spider gazing down on unfortunate prey before its gaping maw.

The door opened up to a tight corridor with a stairway heading straight down. Emma led in front as I followed her, Monica and ‘Sunny’ behind me. The corridor descended what was easily two stories underground before opening up to a room filled with various computer monitors, routers and what seemed like a hundred mile’s worth of cabling sprawled all over the floor. Across from us on the opposite side of the room was a door, kept even more secure than the one out front.

“We’re here boss!” Monica called out as she spun around lazily in a chair, Emma and Sunny booting up a few of the computers, the room subsequently being filled with their quiet humming.

A few lengthy seconds later, the door leisurely creaked open, flushing the whole room with a breeze of cold air. From behind the door emerged a portly muskrat. He wore glasses similar to the bears and had a cane supporting his left leg, moving with a heavy limp, and wore a pair of jeans and a Star Bores t-shirt. In his right paw he carried a large brief case, which he gave to Monica as he passed her.

As he approached I was surprised to see much of his fur dull in colour and that his muzzle was adorned by a forest of grey whiskers. He looked older than any of the other…specialists here --he was sure as hell of a lot older than me. As he comes to a stop before me, he offers his right paw for a shake, swaying ever slightly as I bend down and grasp it to do so. “Hello, I am Mister K” He spoke with a thick Belohoofian accent, “I am the informant who spoke to you over the phone at Rodentia.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you sir.”

“Thank you.” We end our pawshake and he takes a few steps back, looks to his fellow specialists and then to me. “Well…I presume you are here for your data.”

“I doubt I’d be down here under any other circumstance.”

“Yes, yes, indeed.” He hobbled over to Monica, who is busy setting up a computer along with Sunny. Mister K opens up the brief case to reveal a massive external hard drive, which was about the size of your average laptop, if not a little smaller. He took its USB cable and plugged it into the computer, and typed away on the keyboard. Across the entire room, progress bars, code displays and other digital prompts flashed across every monitor. The noise of the computers grew louder, as if they were a techno symphony building up the tension.

It took a few seconds longer before the final progress bar was full and K removed the hard drive and placed it back into the laptop. “Prepare a wipe you three,” he said to his fellow specialists as he walked up to me. They all complied, going to opposite ends of the room and typing away on the computers, causing various lines of code to spill out onto the screens.

“What are they doing?” I ask him as I take the brief case.

“Purging the whole database. After handing over what’s on there, I’d like to remove all liabilities and tie all loose ends.”

“Of course.”

“I presume the payment has gone through successfully.”

“At twelve tonight, the funds will be deposited from the foreign accounts into your dummy accounts, and the four of you will become the richest hackers in the world.”

“…Hackers?”

His question befuddles me a little. “What’s the problem?”

  
“No, there’s no problem. Its just the stigma of the word.”

“What stigma?”

“Well, ‘hacker’. It makes it sound like what we do is hack away at a problem with a blunt object. But a mammal of your…capacity would understand that blunt objects don’t work in the real world or the digital one.”

“I follow you; better to use a scalpel than a hammer.”

“And with that scalpel my associates and I are able to take information, and give it to mammals such as yourself.”

“If I need anything again, I’ll be sure to use your services in the future.”

“Excellent” He says with a big smile “I’ll see you out.”

“Thank you.” The two of us walk back up the corridor to the surface, the bright sun causing the two of us to squint as we adjust.

While blocking out the sun from his eyes with his paw, he surveyed the street before us. “Haven’t been out here in a while…still looks dirty as ever.” He looked up to me “Just what do you plan to do with that data exactly?”

“It’s just a means to an end.”

“I’m sure those ends are of a mammal with ambition…Give Morris my regards, my constituents will be up momentarily to drop you back off at Rodentia.”

“Thank you.” He heads back inside, finally giving me some time to catch my breath. There were plenty of mammals out on the street, and not just for the game either. Plenty appear to be out to just relax and make the most out of the beautiful day.

The scents in the air were just delightful.

With some privacy I took out my burner cell and began to write a text message. The contact’s number wasn’t on the burner, but I knew their number so well that my digits do all the work without a single thought.

I look at the address of the building.

 _‘Got some loose ends._  
_15 Graze Avenue._  
_4 mid-small_  
_Tie ‘em up._  
_Come prepared_

_-D’_

I looked behind my back and sent the text, the phone making the notification that it was successfully sent and that it was now out of credit. I proceeded to snap the phone in half and dump it into one of the readily available bins that was stocked so high with rubbish, while the footpaths remained sparklingly crisp and clean.


	7. Stilted Conversations

To say the least, our drive back to the station was uneventful.

To say the most, it was quiet.

As our car continued through the tightknit streets of Sahara’s inner-suburbia, Victoria and I exchanged no words, only glances. Victoria drove on with subtle indifference while I read over my notepad and twiddled my pen around in my digits. Amidst the cold quiet, I found my mind wandering.

It wasn’t long before the heat started to get to me, and with a sense of exhaustion, I put my notes away in the glove compartment and wiped away a few dews of sweat from my muzzle and forehead.

Goddamn –it was so fucking hot.

Somehow, Savannah had developed an even harsher heat on the ride home, and instead of a cool refreshing breeze to ease us of the muggy atmosphere inside the cabin, the wind carried a vicious humidity that made me, Victoria and even the damn car sweat like we were all popsicles left out in the sun.

The two of us would experience nothing short of salvation when we would eventually cross the weather wall and pass the flamboyantly painted shops and hovels of Palm District. But for now, we were subjugated to the sun’s presence.

It isn’t comfortable to have your shirt partially soaked with sweat and then hastily dried with the help of a car’s underpowered air conditioning system. Even less so when you’re sitting on car seats that were rapidly beginning to feel like flypaper rather than leather.

“God above,” I said in a dazed sigh. “How does a mammal deal with heat like this?”

“I’m surprised you aren’t,” Victoria asked, sweltering herself under the sun’s scorching heat.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I thought you Pumas were built for this weather, you know? Aren’t you known as mountain lions or something?”

“No Vic, you’re thinking of Cougars.”

“There’s a difference? I thought you guys were the same species.”

“Well, I mean, no difference biologically speaking.” I took my tie and wiped it against my forehead, breathing out slow and heavy.

“Best way to think of it,” i continued, “is that Pumas and Cougars are like cousins. We’re used to that tropical humidity that makes your fur feel like flypaper and eyes like they’ve been seasoned with salt for some Prench entrée. Cougars are used to that Midwest heat that feels like someone’s taken a blow torch to your skin.”

“Simple enough," She smirked, "try and imagine how I’m dealing with this.” She said with smugness.

I look and smile. “What’s your evolutionary kick in the crotch?”

“Henry, my mom says that I shouldn’t go anywhere when its over twenty degrees.”

“Guess you wouldn’t want to live anywhere outside of Tundra.”

She nodded vivaciously. “Oh yeah, my first few weeks here were murder. Felt like I was trudging around in ten extra layers of clothing.”

“You would of loved it in Maw. Damn place seemed to freeze over for half the year. Never during winter, though.”

“Hey, anything would have beaten where I was bouncing around those first few months.”

“You found a place in Tundra eventually though, right?” I removed my tie and threw it in the back, shifting around in my own seat as it creased and stuck to me with my every movement, trying in vain to get some sense of comfort.

“Yeah. For a while I was sharing this place with a girlfriend of mine; Maggie was her name. We were really close, had some pretty good times together.” She laughs with felicity, her glee seeming to resonate within the cabin like we were in some echo chamber. “But she hooked up with this guy while I was doing my police studies. When I was at the academy, she went off to Denmark or Boreway or somewhere like that, following her heart –classic love story right?”

“Right out of a book.”

“Anyway, I couldn’t afford the place on my own and I couldn’t find a roommate, so it wound up that I couldn’t live there. The department hooked me up with this place in Tundra; I think it was some housing complex out at Snowcastle Way for government employees.” We merge over a few lanes, the pace of the traffic seeming to increase as the highway goes on a downward dive. “Went up the ranks as you do, and eventually I bought this nice little place in the Crevasse Valley, and I’ve been there ever since.

It’s gotten nice and cozy, if I do say so myself.” She had brazen smile on her face as she drove; it’s something of confidence and achievement.

At her expression, I experience a brief flashback.

“How about you? They hook you up with anything when you came here?” Victoria’s question quickly snaps me out of it.

“No, a few…friends of mine hooked me up with an apartment on Artiodactyla Street.”

“Nice?”

“Its not that bad for what it is. Sure, there is a bit of peeling paint and the door is a pain in the tail to lock most of the time, but honestly, for the price, I expected worse. Besides, it isn’t too far from the station, and the park out by it is nice.”

“You know, I’ve never been to any of the parks near there; they give a good walk?”

“Pretty good, I’ve enjoyed walking around there whenever I’ve found the time. A lot smaller than where I used to live though.”

“Out at Maw?”

“Yeah, I lived in the city’s east end. Nicest part of the city I could afford on my salary. It was a good place, lived out there with my wife.” I felt my tongue poised to throw more words out my mouth, but it was strangulated by a cobra, that wound around its tastebud-ridden flesh.

“Your wife?”

“Yeah, we were married for awhile. But we separated a while ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that Henry,” Her voice was fully of sincerity I’d never heard from her before –from very few people really. “I know better than anyone that sometimes…relationships just don’t work out how you’d want them to.”

“Yeah…I think we just weren’t meant for one another. I pushed her into a corner and she took the rug out from under me. I think it was better for the both of us that we split. I moved on from it awhile ago.” 

“Really?”

“Really.” I almost certainly sound like I’m in denial; maybe I am. Up to Victoria to decide that I suppose.

“Listen, Henry, I don’t mean to prod and poke you about anything personal you would have experienced back in a place like Maw- She stops speaking for a second, cutting off to give herself a few seconds to think.

I don’t interject.

“God only knows what a mammal of the law would have dealt with in a place like that.”

“You weren’t prodding or poking or doing anything like that Vic. It’s just –stuff from my past, you know?” I scratch at an itch forming at the back of my head “I know I’ve got to deal with it …I think I’m too stubborn to do much because I’m a sentimental old bastard.” I felt a faint smile grow across my mussel.

“Hey” She said with sympathy “As far as I’m concerned, a little bit of stubbornness is a good thing to have in a person. What my mom told me.”

I was more than willing to change the subject. “She sounds like a smart womammal.”

“Oh yeah, smartest womammal on the block –toughest too. Guess raising a big litter does that to a mother. She’d be huggn’ you so tight you could barely breath one minute and then giving you the coldest stare that side of Tundra for not eating your vegetables the next.

Fairness. I think that’s something she’s carried into her old age. Can still talk down to me and my six brothers and sisters like we were still little kits.” She laughing.

“Glad to hear that you and your folks keep close.” I watch as a few over stacked flatbeds pass. ‘That’s a ticket’ I thought to myself. “I think that’s important for a mammal –to keep in touch with your folks.”

“What about you and your mother? If I’m not imprudent for asking?”

“Don’t worry about it Vic. I asked about your mom so it’s only fair for you to be inquisitive as to mine.

Well...I only hold fond memories of my mother; she cherished me as if I was some magnificent jewel bestowed upon her from God –as any mother would, I suppose. But she did live a hard life, especially after we had to move to Maw because of dad’s work.”

I glanced away from Victoria before looking back to her and continuing “The toll of moving up to Maw must have been heavy on the both of them. I missed the sea enough that I bawled every night for the first few weeks. I can’t imagine what it must have been for someone like her. I think the city took its toll on her like it did everyone." I took a brief pause that stretched out forever "She grew a lot more distant as I grew, still the loving and neutering mother that I knew, but still, there was a distance.

She...died a few years back.” I let out a deep sigh and wiped my face with my paw, more sweat seeming to precipitate out of no where.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, Henry.”

“No, it’s alright. She lived a good life –and a long one at that. She was eighty-nine when she passed. I think it was on the twentieth of June. Dad passed about a year later around about the ninth; he’d just turned ninety-two on the fifth.” I found myself smiling, “Tough as a board those two were, but I guess seventy years of marriage does that to ya.”

“Well, Henry, I reckon they did a mighty fine job of raising a decent young male.”

“Shucks Vic you humble me. And I’d love to meet your mother sometime; I’m sure she’s just as wonderful as you say she is.”

“Trust me, she’s quite the handful, even for a veteran cop from Maw.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

We continue driving along the highway, the atmosphere of the cabin seeming much more buoyant. I looked vacantly out the window at the landscape that moved in the distance at a snail's pace. I could still feel the district's intense heat.

I go to say something to Victoria, but amongst the calm I noticed a strange noise from somewhere inside the cabin. “Hey Victoria…you hear that?” 

“What, Henry?”

“That sound.”

“What?”

“I don’t know…sounds like a whacking noise. Hang on a sec, let me turn off the radio for a bit.” I pressed on the nob and the subdued music fell silent, the muggy but affable ambiance of the cabin broken only by the sound of the air conditioner on full blast.

The two of us fell silent, listening out for anything uncanny, like we were on a stakeout, waiting for the smallest sign of wrongdoing. However, as quickly as the sound had surfaced, it disappeared, not betraying itself to our ears. “Huh,” Victoria said, “must have been something on the radio.”

“I don’t know, it sounded like it- Suddenly the whacking noise emerged again, this time more volatile and thunderous, overcoming the noise of the fan. It was obvious that whatever the sound was, it came from somewhere within the dashboard. After a few seconds, the fan abruptly cut off, and didn't respond to the push of any button or the shouting of any swear.

“Shit.” Victoria's face now carried an irked expression.

“Yeah, shit.” We proceeded to roll down the windows, but even then, the heat continued to build.

“Want me to put on the radio?” I asked.

“Yeah…we need something to distract us from this heat.”

By the time we finally passed through the station’s pristine gates and descended into the car park below the car had withstood a thorough sandblasting at the paws of the worst winds Sahara had to offer; its engine suffocated with sand and dust. The stuff seemed to find its way into every nook and cranny of the cabin’s curvature and underneath every fold of our clothing.

Coupled with the humidity that had turned the cabin into a massive pressure cooker, our shirts and pants ponged like they’d been sprayed down with week old river water and left out to dry in a sandstorm for good measure. Or, to put it bluntly, we looked and smelled like death.

“Well…I’d say that could have gone worse.” Victoria joked.

“Guess it could have. We could of wound up stuck in traffic.” I said as we made out way through the car park and towards Nick’s office.

“I think I would have just walked.”

“You’d give yourself third degree burns before you’d make three feet. Hell, I saw some hedgehogs crack a few eggs on their bonnet; a few seconds later, they were sunny side up.”

“I think I could have gone for a beer rather then some fried eggs.”

“On the job?” I teased as we came up to the window looking into Nick’s storage room, seemingly absent of any banging, clanging or swearing. I knock on the mesh with the back of my paw a few times and lean against the wall.

“You’re not going to report me are you Henry?” She said with words sly and slick, tossing the keys up into the air and catching them over and over to some unheard beat.

“Your secrets safe with me Vic. I myself like to indulge in the occasional drink from time to time.” By ‘occasional’ I meant chronic. And when I say ‘from time to time’, the literal translation would be something along the lines of ‘whenever I have five minutes of quietness to myself’.

But that doesn’t make for genial conversation between partners now does it?

I continue on. “You got a favourite?”

“What?”

“You know, you got a favourite beer, or whisky, or whatever.”

She twirls the keys around in her digits “Well, I’m not really that picky. I can down anything from a whisky to a wine as long as it isn’t too strong.” She looks up at the ceiling in thought. “I got to say, in terms of beer...I do like a good Hindeken. Usually hits the spot for me.”

“Yeah, I’ve tried Hindeken a few times before…a bit weak for me.”

“Weak? Are you kidding me? After like, four to five, I’m all ‘woo-hoo’ and running my mouth off like I’ve had acid injected right into my brain. Hell, Loxodonta can barely down over eight, and that guy has two things going for him: one, he’s an elephant; two, he drinks like a whale, and then some.”

“What can I say? Argentlemuran parents and I grew up in Maw.”

“Well, what do you like?”

“Jackrabbit Daniels.”

“Who doesn’t?” We both laugh.

“Yeah…you know? I did use to have this other stuff when I was younger and ignorant. You’d never find it out here.”

“What was it?”

“Back in Argentlemur, most folks -mine included- liked this stuff called Néctar. It’s like rum, but on steroids. Huge down there because it uses heaps of sugar cane and it tastes absolutely fucking amazing. My dad had it all the time.

Anyway, when my family moved up here, so did a lot of others, with them, they brought Néctar. For a while, you could distil and serve it like any other spirit, but the shit is near lethal, especially if you’re stupid enough to try and binge it in one night. Eventually the city introduced prohibition on the stuff. 

So, my dad did what any responsible adult would do.

He started brewing it illegally. I guess some folks don't learn from history” I laugh as a few nomadic tears form in my eyes –of happiness and a few other emotions.

Victoria looked gob smacked and amused, laughing as she dustedsand off of her shirt and pants. “Holy shit really?”

I did the same. “Yeah, I can’t believe it even now. He got a mate to convert an old water heater and boom! Homebrewed Néctar for the whole family. I had to bail him out once.”

“Oh my god, you have to tell me that story.”

“It’s a long one.”

“Come on.”

“Don’t you want to hear about my first tasting it?”

“Was this before or after you bailed him out?”

“Way before, a good six years.”

“Well it makes sense to go in chronological order doesn’t it Henry?”

I laughed a little. “Yes it does Victoria; yes it does.”

With the sound of paws lightly tapping across a cold concrete floor, Nick emerged from behind the window’s mesh. Instead of his uniform we first saw him in, he wore a heavy pair of navy blue overalls, frayed and well worn. His fur was a mess; its ruby red coat had been made black and ragged with motor fluid.

Funnily enough, it made his contrastingly coloured eyes and jubilant personality shine that much brighter.

He panted for a few seconds, finally catching his breath. “H…hey guys. Everything go all right?” He wiped he forehead, slick with oil and sweat.

“All right for our line of work.” Victoria  passed the keys through the little gap at the base of the window, Nick accepting them in his not-so-greasy paw.

“Great, great. I was just working on a few cars we’ve got in the shop. That reminds me – transmission work all right while you were out? I was worried because Sahara always puts a strain on those things.”

“She drove like a dream until the air conditioner gave out.”

“What?” he yelled, “I got that damn thing sorted out the last time it died! Wasn’t that long ago either; two weeks tops!” He looked down with dismay and cursed a few more times under his breath.

He looks back up at us “Guess that’s why you two smell worse than me!” His disheartened behaviour dissolved with a flick of his paw in the air as if to say to us ‘Listen, don’t worry about it’. “I’ll sort out a new one for you guys until I can get that pain-in-the-tail in the shop and fix it.”

“Thanks Nick. Have a good one.” Victoria says as she waves and heads towards the elevator.

“See you guys around.”

“Cheers Nick.” I catch up with Victoria, who was now waiting before the elevator doors. “So,” I continue as I came alongside her, “shall I tell the tale  of my father’s epic drunken venture?”

“Pray tell Henry.”

With a ding, the doors slid open and the two of us entered, Victoria pressing the button for our squad room’s floor. As the elevator shot up like a rectangular rocket, I continued my conversation with Victoria amidst the sound of speeding cables and horrible music.

“Well Victoria, first time I ever tried Néctar was when I was nineteen…maybe a little younger. Can’t remember the specifics.

My father took me down to the basement, where he’d set up the distillery and everything else. He looked me dead in the eye and said ‘Henry, you’ve grown up faster than I ever could have thought. You’ve got one more thing to do before you can finally become a male.’ And he offered me this tiny shot. Like, it was a mini shot glass, barely enough to get a mouse drunk on anything else.

He told me to drink it, said it was the final test of my worth or something like that. Now, in my youthful ignorance, I figured nothing on it, so I swigged it  down with one throw.”

“I’m guessing that was a bad idea?”

“As soon as I saw the expression on my dad’s face I knew it was the worse thing I could have done. I think the best way to describe it was like a mixture of terror and admiration. Terror from the reality of what I’d just done, admiration for the fact that I did it.”

“From all of this buildup, I’m guessing it hit you like a truck.”

“More like a truck had hit me square in the head and nowhere else. The stuff was really strong, and sure, I’d drunken some pretty heavy alcohol before -although I’ve never been much of a heavy drinker- Lie. “But this stuff...yet to come across anything as strong as it was.

Against something like Hindeken, its like David versus Goliath; that little shot glass packed more of a punch than any beer, bourbon or whisky I’ve had put together.”

“I’m betting you didn’t have it a lot after that.”

“Never touched the stuff again- Lie, “Honest to God, I don’t know how my father and his mates could down a few glasses one night and have a working liver the next. Freaks of nature, those old buggers were.”

“I’m learning something new about you everyday, Henry.” She nods genially, scratching her neck and stretching her legs as her tail coils and twitches like it had a mind of its own. “Some rite of passage, I’ve got to say.”

“I agree with you on that, Vic.” I stretched as well, twisting and bending to remove a developing and irritating cramp on my lower back just to the side of my spine. My tail seemed to move on its own as well, swishing on the ground gently like a tranquil vine moved ever so softly by the rainforest’s damp winds.

“But in all honesty,” I continued, “I think I’m glad I did it with him. We spent the night and most of the next day laughing our asses off and just talking. I think it was…one of the few times we actually…I don’t know…had some good, quality one-on-one time.”

“That sounds nice, Henry.”

“It was nice. Most vibrant memory I have of him.” The rest of our time in the elevator was in silence, just taking in the calm and jubilant atmosphere that bounced around its four walls. On an unpleasant side note, however, the two of us both seemed to notice a staleness that lingered in the air, and whether we would admit it or not, Nick was right: we stunk.

Once the elevator opened up to the third floor, the two of us made our way towards the squad room. As we continued walking, I noticed an Opossum clerk sniff the air as he passed us, muttering “What the heck is that smell?” under his breath as he turned into an office behind us.

“Hey Vic, I think I might just head down to the showers to freshen up.”

She nodded, itching the tuffs of her ears. “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Rather not be going in there smelling like a sweaty sock left out in the sun; Swiner won’t let me hear the last of it."

“He’s that boar who sits a few desks over from us, isn’t he?”

“Yeah; one thing he tells everyone is that ‘If any of ya’ll get ta smelln’ worse than me, I’ll never yet ya hear the end of it.’” She mimics mimicking a thick Yaksan accent -to no avail. “You know where they are, right?”

“Yeah, I went by yesterday when I was leaving just to sort a few things out with my locker. Don’t have a change of clothes though.” We continued walking past the frosted glass doors of the squad room, heading towards the row of elevators at the opposite end of the walkway.

“I don’t think you’ll need a change of clothes Henry. We just need to smell better than Swiner for today, and the mammal doesn’t set the bar that high.” She smirked.

The elevator took us down to the first floor, looking down on  unspoiled porcelain floors and Clawhauser’s front desk, which was swamped by half a dozen or so mammals. “Unlucky guy.” I mentioned to Victoria as the two of us followed the walkway towards the showers.

“I tell you Henry, it gives me chills thinking of all the paperwork they’re going to give him.” She laughed as we trailed down the corridor that splintered like a twig away from the arching trunk of the walkway. The corridor’s carpeted floor soon gave way to a tiled surface, cold to the touch -a welcome surprise for my paws. It led onwards to a pair of large locker rooms, one for females and one for males.

At the back of each room was a set of male and female bathrooms running alongside each other, varying in size to accommodate mammals from the towering elephants to the smallest dormouse (the latter having a series of tiny catwalks running atop the lockers to avoid the risk posed by their larger officers).

Victoria turned to face me before she entered. “Listen, I actually do have a change of clothes in my locker. I think I’ll have a quick shower and then meet you back up at the squad room, ok?”

“No problem, I’ll just clean myself up so I don’t smell like an old dishcloth and meet you back up there. I’ll see if I can find out anything about Abigail’s school.”

“Thanks, I’ll be there in ten.” She went into the locker room. Sidestepping a Jaguar leaving in civilian clothes and carrying a scent heavily laced with designer perfume, I did the same.

I made my way over to my locker block, locker situated in the middle block for mammals of ‘average’ height. . Down each aisle was a sturdy board of wood erected from concrete foundations that served as a bench. 

There was a reindeer nearby my locker, sitting down on the aisle’s bench wearing a singlet and board shorts. I was initially jolted by the sight of his antlers being a bloody red and with bone tissue hanging off like wet toilet paper. Noticing my presence, he looked up at me with a calm demeanour. “Just casting bud. Hope I didn’t give you too much of a heart attack there.”

I let out a combination of a sigh and a laugh “Nah you’re fine.” I opened up my locker and shuffled around its contents, looking for something to cover up my smell. “Never actually seen anyone casting before.”

“Really? Well, I guess there is a first time for everything.” He  used a rag to clean away some tissue and dried blood.

“Does it hurt at all?”

“It did the first few times, but it’s never caused any more discomfort than, say, when you guys loose a fang and grow a new one. And it only comes once a year, so I’ve learnt to manage.” He takes some hygiene products out of his locker and coats it onto his horns, grimacing as he rubbed it in with the clean side of his bloody rag. “This stuff stings like a bitch though.”

“I bet.” I fetch a can of deodorant and spray it underneath my shirt. “I’m Henry, by the way.” I hold out my vacant paw, which he stands up and grasps with his hoof in a firm shake. “Just got back from Sahara.”

“Jeremy. Pleasure to meet you, Henry. You say you got back from Sahara, huh? That explains the sweat and all that sand you tracked in.” I looked behind me and noticed a not-too-subtle trail following my path. “Don’t worry mate, I won’t snitch.”

He laughed as he packed the rag and products back into his locker and got out a pair of denim shorts and a cotton shirt. “So, what department are you with?”

“Homicide.”

“I’m from narcotics myself.”

“Me too…well, I used to be anyway.”

“In Zootopia?” He somehow got the shirt over his antlers, brushing off some bone tissue around its collar.

“No, back in the department I used to work in. It’s a fair time ago now, but I served a good thirteen years with ‘em. I think I saw all there was to see.”

“Really? I’ve only been on the job for three years and I thought I’ve come across everything there is to see. Can’t wait to see what thirteen years has in store for me.”

“That’s only if you don’t get sick of the job first!” I half-heartedly joked, but I made sure not to let it show. For a brief second, a silence preceded over the room and I wondered if I should tell him whether you got sick of the job or not, you’d wind up staying much longer than you wanted to.

The second passed. “Well, I ought to get going. It was nice meeting you, Jeremy. I hope to see you around.”

“You too Henry, happy hunting.” And with that, I left the locker room, smelling slightly better than before.

I noticed while walking to the elevator that Clawhauser had dealt with the hoard that beseeched him earlier and was busy socializing with a group of detectives and uniformed police. Amongst them was none other than Nick and Judy, the two side-by-side and looking like they were heading out to lunch. Whilst waiting for the elevator doors to open, I noted how cordial the two looked together.

The brief elevator ride was quiet with Victoria’s absence, as was my hurried walk to the squad room, but as soon as I passed through the double doors of Homicide, my world was made noisy. The air of the room struck a strange combination between abuzz and static, and as I made my way past the detectives working at the desks, on their computers, on their phones or buried deep within their notes, I noticed that Victoria was still absent from her desk.

Sitting down behind my own, I quickly logged into the desktop computer and cleared some space for my notebook and Abigail’s files. I brushed the stray pens and pencils that lay out across the wooden desk like fallen trees into my top drawer where my personal copies of her documents laid.

As the computer sluggishly booted up, I found myself flipping through the dozen or so pages I had hastily written during our little therapy session with the Duncans. I looked over Abigail’s many files, reading every sheet of paper like it was a chapter in her life. Even once the computer had booted up, I continued reading. ‘Who killed you Abigail?’ I mulled ‘Come on girl, tell me.’

Entrenched deep in thought, it was I, this time, who didn’t notice my partner’s presence until she hopped down into her chair, giving my quite a jolt. Her fur was slightly damp, and she wore a new tank top and pair of jeans. “Hey, thanks for manning the fort while I was having my shower.”

“No problem, you weren’t long at all.” I moved my notes to the side. “The computer has just booted up.”

“That’s lucky,” she said with enthusiasm. “Luckier still is the fact that it looks like Swiner isn’t here today, so I think we’re safe from him for now.”

“I think I have more reason to be concerned about my smell than you.”

“Maybe.” She gestured at the files I had piled to the side. “Are those Abigail’s?”

“Her information and my notes from our interrogation with the Duncans.”

“Here, pass me them and I’ll type myself up a digital copy –I’ll email you a copy of mine to you later today.” I leaned over my desk and passed the thick notebook to Victoria, who set it out in front of her and booted up her own desktop. “Now, regarding her school, I think we should first have a chat with her teachers.”

“Seems like a smart place to start." I began to look through Abigail's school files. "Here, says her electrical engineering teacher is one Emanuel Jacobs...looks like a Miss Diana Banks teaches her art animation.” I gave Victoria a look at the papers as I bought up their details onto my computer.

“Got to hope that they’ll shed some light on all this.”

“The more mammals we talk to, the less questions we’ll need to ask.”

“What do you think we’ll find with these two?”

“As far as I know, we could find nothing and be back as square one. Or…” I trail off as I notice that her electrical engineering teacher –Jacobs -has an unusually blank record, with there being close to nothing other than the bare minimum. Like it was a dirty slate bleached clean. Could be a good omen, or a sign of ill-hope.

“Or what, Henry?” Victoria’s words derailed my train of thought to the back of my mind.

“Or, Victoria, we strike gold.”

The remainder of our shift was spent formalizing reports, making a few dozen phone calls to Abigail’s university along with her known associates and generally trying to limit the amount of paperwork either of us had to take home –more predominantly Victoria’s idea than mine.

Regardless, I left the frosted glass doors with dossiers upon dossiers of paperwork, lingering bags beneath my eyes and an itching sensation that ran down the back of my neck and shoulders. Victoria left with very much the same –take away the itch.

Before leaving, I noticed that Becky was still at her reception desk, while most of the other day shift mammals left or were leaving. “Working late, Becky?”

Startled, she jumped in her chair a little. “Only me,” I softly told her. She seemed very prone to that.

“Oh, um, no, I’m not working late…I usually stay here for a few hours into the night shift.”

“You sleep well working so late?”

“Oh yeah, like a cub. Kind of helps I only live, like, a two minute walk down the road.”

“Ok then, take care of yourself Becky.”

She brushed the fur around her furtoo. “You too, Henry. Goodnight.” She dozingly waved, resting her head on one hoof.

“Night.” I responded as I walked though the doors.

Victoria was waiting outside, and continued walking when I caught up. Along with other mammals heading home for the day, the two of us entered the elevators and discussed our plans for tomorrow. “So we’ve got the booking with Jacobs at twelve thirty?” Victoria asked as she rearranged some of her notes.

“Yeah, Jacobs’ at the university so we’ll be having it in his office. You manage to get into contact with Banks at all?”

She shook her head, “She won’t be back until Monday week, but I’ll make sure to contact her as soon as she lands.”

“They’ll want some kind of press release before then, won’t they?” I huffed as I watched the floor numbers descend. 

“Probably, but its not like we have much to tell at the moment. Bullpen will probably want us to do the whole song and dance in front of the cameras.

I doubt it’d won’t be anything beyond the standard steps –name, estimated time of death, not at liberty to state any more at this time, yada-yada-yada, and then it’s back to work.” The elevator made a ding and its doors slowly slide open, mammals pouring out and filling it just as quickly. “I kind of want to get this questioning over with before the autopsy is released.” We make our way across the lobby towards the main exit.

“That’ll give us an idea of what to do with it, I guess.” As we’re walking, I was surprised at how much activity was about the building. At this time, I figured things would have died down, but from appearances it looked as if night shift was just as busy as its sunny counterpart.

The majority of mammals starting their worknight were of a nocturnal variety, with any day-fairing mammal appearing like they’d been stuck on the job after drawing the short straw. There were some possums, raccoons and even a few bats bypassing the hurdle of a crowded elevator and flying right up to their designated floors.

Instead of a portly cheetah, a colugo; equally busy filling documents and dealing with irate resident,s worked the front desk.

I found it interesting how, although during the dayshift the majority of police on duty were prey, during the nightshift, that majority fell into the predator’s court. I sleepily mused about the old saying, ‘Predators owned the Night and little else.’

Outside, the sun was slowly beginning its retreat behind the horizon from the encroaching blackness of the ascending moon. Still, there were some oranges across the sky’s canvas, fading slowly as the city’s high-reaching towers started to light up and enter the nightlife.

I swear that I could just hear the beating drums of Owl Street from far away.

“Gosh, this is the favorite part of my day, Henry.” 

“Really?”

“Yeah, I like it when the sky looks like this…it’s just so tranquil.” Her eyes looked like they were full of stars, of the very sun that they observed, beaming rays of orange and yellow across the fluffy curvature of the clouds.

“It is something beautiful to take in.”

“Sure is…” She blinked as a daunting cloud rolled in on a pacifist’s storm and covered the sun, only allowing tiny rays to pierce across the skies and touch the city and the darkening earth around it.

“Well, I ought to get going.” I turned and walked over to my Cowdi. “Good night, Victoria.

Drive safe.”

“You too, Henry.” She turned and headed towards her own truck. “See ya tomorrow.” A gust of frigid wind drowned out her words as the two of us hurriedly got into our cars, and hastily headed home. I was in such a rush I didn’t notice the sun breaking the cloud’s wall, and cascading light one more time before sinking below the horizon.


End file.
